Ribbon Sticks

This blog gets lots of hits from people doing internet searches about ribbon sticks.

What are you all doing (or trying to do) with ribbon sticks?

Ribbon sticks are a topic on this site because at the church where I work with kids, we've been making a set of ribbon sticks for each color of the liturgical year. At the beginning of each liturgical season, and sometimes on other occasions, kids are invited to carry the ribbon sticks during the procession at the beginning of the service. If there are enough ribbon sticks to go around the choir and clergy carry them too. And yes, even though I'm not a child, clergy or choir member, I usually join the procession with a ribbon stick too. Somebody has to model for the kids and give them directions, right? (Working with kids is such a handy "excuse" for doing fun stuff.)

We make the sticks like this:

1. Cut wooden dowels into desired lengths.
   
2. Sand dowels as needed.
3. Cut strips of ribbon. Various widths and styles are good.
4. Tape a set of ribbons to the end of each stick
   
5. Secure the ribbons with a staple gun.
   

Things to consider:

• Height of the people who will carry the ribbon sticks: Sticks and ribbons for small children have needed to be shorter than I imagined. Ribbons can easily end up on the floor & under foot.
  

• Where do the sticks go after their main use? Deposit them in decorative containers of sand? Keep them for waving in other parts of the service? Gather them up before they become weapons?

• Making the ribbon sticks can be a fun intergenerational project.

The Big Change Next Week

Beginning Jan. 20th, children of all ages, and parents who wish to accompany them, are invited to the gathering room during the 10AM service after the Collect of the Day. We will take kid friendly approaches to explore readings of the day or other relevant themes as well as prepare for participation in other parts of the service. We will rejoin the full congregation just before the prayers. Following the service art and craft materials will be available in the front of the church. Everyone is welcome to use them.

Making Ribbon Sticks - and Doing Things Differently

My experiment in doing things differently is off to an encouraging start.

Today we made blue ribbon sticks for Advent after the 10:00 service.
There was also a Bishop's Committee report forum, led by Lou, which I believe included report of my attendance at the last Bishop's Committee meeting in which, among other things, I identified the need not to do so much of what I do at church in children's & family ministry alone.

Out of today's events comes the following.

Thank you to:

• Everyone who brought blue ribbon
• Anthony(??) whose name have to ask his name again...for helping move the table
• Madge for volunteering to help a couple weeks ago, being right there today & making a point of inviting kids to participate
• Deacon Sandy for going around "ordering" adults to participate
• All the adults & children who participated. (I hope you enjoyed yourselves.)
• Patti for getting a napkin to clean up my daughter's spilled juice*
• Aron for putting the activity in the space it was in & for announcing it
• George for agreeing to staple the ribbons onto the sticks on Wednesday
• Ethel & Madge for their offers of help in the future
• People who I imagine were involved in ways I didn't notice or don't recall.

I feel like we did something together today. That seems good. That will make using the ribbon sticks all the better too.

I've had more than my usual amount of conversations with other people at church in the last couple weeks too. Being where more people are makes that possible. They haven't all been big conversations. But I feel like they're important.

* I only found out about this spilled juice episode later as my kids & I talked about the difficulties they had when I was so taken up with the other interactions of the activity that I wasn't responding to them very well....Mommy my juice spilled and I was trying to tell you but you didn't hear me and then that other lady got a napkin to wipe it up.... Note to Aron & Bishop's Committee: isn't this story an interesting juxtaposition with my story of the juice spill of a couple weeks ago?