So here I am to share about our ideas for starting a prayer journal for young children. My daughter is 5, so though she is just starting to read and write, she is limited in the number of words she knows off the top of her head. Currently, her prayer journal is mostly pictures that she draws, but we have found ways to add other elements that she can use more and more as she grows and becomes more familiar with language. And she loves it.
To start off, I grabbed a cheap spiral notebook for her to use. She decorated the front with stickers and her name.
Yes, all we have in the way of stickers at the moment is Minnie, Hello Kitty, and Doc McStuffins...
I finally found a use for the holy cards, bookmarks, etc that come in the mail from all the lovely Catholic organizations asking for money. I save them for Kayla to put in her prayer journal now.
She loves the pictures that remind her of holy saints and Jesus, and sometimes she uses them to look at and draw her own version. Some of them have little prayers on them as well, which she glues in and she'll bring me the journal at various points in the day to pray some of them.
The next tool I made to aid her in prayer journaling is a Word Book.
Ta-da!
Inside I have a section for each letter of the alphabet and I wrote a bunch of sight words as well as the names of some of her favorite saints and words that often relate to prayer and the Bible (i.e. grace, pray, sing, love, light etc...)
She is pretty good at being able to sound out a lot of words, but obviously the Word Book still requires some assistance from me at this point. If she wants to write "Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord..." she can pretty much always find the right letter for each word, but sometimes needs some assistance finding the word under that letter category. Eventually this book will give her the ability to prayer journal pretty much entirely on her own and add new words as she grows and learns more and more. And of course, her sisters can use it as well when the time comes.
And just for fun, here are some examples of a few pages from her prayer journal. I love that she loves praying decades of the rosary with us as a family, saying prayers at bedtime together, learning our new family consecration, singing her own little songs to Jesus, and memorizing scriptures, but I am thrilled to see how prayer journaling has given her a whole new way to pray and relate to Jesus on a more personal, individual level that is unique to her.
On the left is a picture she drew of Jesus and the right is part of a scripture verse that she memorized and loves.
And this one is Mary
I love this page where she wrote a bunch of prayers to some of our favorite saints asking them to pray for our family.
Little hearts are so beautiful and pure. I hope and pray that she always stays this close to Jesus.
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