That was my 5th grade boys last night. Whole table of them, begging to close class with meditative prayer.
Yes. True story.
Loyola Press has been sending down a workshop leader to educate the local catechists for a few years now, and every year we’ve been put through the paces of meditative prayer. Good stuff. I would guess 2/3rds of the prayer exercises we learn are to my taste, and the other 1/3 are more appreciated by teachers of younger grades.
So anyhow, this was the year we finally got to experiment on the kids institute prayer sessions on a regular basis.
What we do is this: We open class with a short set of “normal” prayers. We do the teaching stuff. And then at the end we clean up the room, light candles, turn down the lights, put on reflective music if appropriate, and one of us leads the kids through some kind of prayerful reflection. Each class is same set-up routine, different meditation. We get them from our textbook and associated resources, or else we make something up. (Something easy to lead, like slowly reading through a traditional prayer and letting the kids reflect on the meaning).
First couple rounds we had to work out some glitches, which required catechists to pretend we knew what we were doing. Among other lessons, we learned to end the session before kids ended it themselves by getting all squirmy and goofy. I think it helped that my brilliant co-teacher used the time after our first couple attempts to let the kids share what they thought. When you’ve done something new, you want to talk about it.
And now they totally love it. They ask for it. They rush to clean-up. (Yes, with boys yelling at each other and pushing and shoving to put supplies away.) They beg for real candles to be lit — I have about ten zillion on our little prayer table, lighting up the crucifix and our paperboard icons.
And then they sit quietly and pray.
Lovely lovely.