“I don’t know what to pray,” said one of my preschoolers after I read the title page in Always Remember to Pray. Several new preschoolers had just promoted into our Mission Friends class a couple weeks before at the beginning of this church year. I decided to read Always Remember to Pray before our prayertime to help us talk about prayer. I responded to this preschooler, “Let’s find out what we can pray!” I read several pages of the book until the preschoolers started fidgeting, and then I flipped the pages over to read the last page. Before we prayed, we talked about ways we could pray for the missionary family.

Preschoolers are learning that we can pray anywhere and at any time. In order to learn how to pray, they need to hear the prayers of their parents and teachers at church. In Mission Friends, we can model how to pray for others as we teach preschoolers of ways to pray for the missionaries featured and the people with whom they serve.

Tips about Praying with Preschoolers

Getting preschoolers’ attention is no easy task! Keeping it is even harder. Preschoolers don’t always understand that you have to pause and listen when someone’s talking, or that it’s considered bad manners to talk and play while someone is speaking. They haven’t yet learned how to delay self-gratification! So, when you’re beginning your introduction to Group Time, it’s important to do something that will grab and keep your little ones’ attention! Here are some examples: