Welcome to Place Kids!
Here's some information about . . .
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What happens on Sunday morning,
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Our children's ministry coordinator, and
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The thinking behind our programs
Sunday Mornings
Nursery
Off the foyer of the church there is a nursery if you need a quiet place for your babe in arms, or if your child needs a place to be loud! It has a window into the sanctuary, and the sound of the service is piped in.
Toddler Room
On the other side of the same foyer is a room for toddlers, complete with simple puzzles and games. Again, there is a window, and (again) the sound is piped in for parents/guardians.
Younger Place Kids
This is a program for children age two and a half to age five. (Approximately! All children are different, so we are flexible with the ages.) For the comfort of this younger group, we emphasize predictable routine. A volunteer welcomes and greets each child, and when all are seated we begin by ringing a bell and lighting a candle (as a way of establishing that this is a sacred space and time). We then sing a prayer before sharing a snack together. After the snack, we use wooden or felted figures to tell a familiar story which is repeated for many weeks before moving on to another. (Again: predictable and comfortable routine!) For the rest of our time together, children can choose a story to have read to them, create art, work on simple crafts, or play.
Older Place Kids
This program is for children from grade 1 to grade 5. (Again, approximately.) To maintain continuity, once more we have a predictable routine: ringing a bell, lighting a candle, singing a prayer, and sharing a snack. We use wooden figures to tell a different Bible story each week, in a manner inspired by Godly Play, and there is a time for wondering after the storyteller is finished. In general, the Bible stories in this class are from the Old Testament in the fall, and from the New Testament after Christmas. Children might respond to the Bible story by making an illustration in their blank books, creating something with wool or other natural materials, or working on an ongoing project from previous weeks. (Each child has a place to store unfinished work.) Often this “work time” turns into a time of collaboration, as the children make up games together.
'Cool' Kids
This program is for kids in grade 6 through grade 12. Cool Kids meet on Sunday mornings every other week, where we focus on discussion and community. With incredible and committed adult volunteers, the Cool Kids talk about big questions and relate them to Christianity. There is also a monthly social get together.
Meet our Children's Ministry Coordinator!
Heidi Teel
Heidi has been our Children’s Ministry Coordinator since the beginning of 2026, bringing to our programs her past experiences of parenting, homeschooling, volunteering in various Sunday Schools, and teaching adults about spiritual formation in children. She has found it a joy to learn from the kids and their caregivers as she also works alongside the pastors to create programs that reflect the core values of The Place: Christ at the Centre, Authenticity, Community, Grace, and Mystery.
Heidi has worked as the Interim Community Life Minister at St. Barnabas Anglican Church, and has taught courses on Children and Faith Formation, Children’s Literature, and the Theology of Food. She is co-author of A Time to Read: Good Books for Growing Readers: For Those Who Love Books, Children, and God. Heidi and Paul have been married for 36 years, have three grown children, two sons-in-law, and one granddaughter!
Please feel free to contact Heidi Teel at kids@theplace.ca if you have any questions or concerns, or if you are interesting in volunteering and learning alongside these wonderful children.
Read More about the Philosophy Behind Our Place Kids Programming
Mark 10:13–16
The people brought children to Jesus, hoping he might touch them. The disciples shooed them off. But Jesus was irate and let them know it: “Don’t push these children away. Don’t ever get between them and me. These children are at the very centre of life in the kingdom. Mark this: Unless you accept God’s kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you’ll never get in.” Then, gathering the children up in his arms, he laid his hands of blessing on them.
Robert Farrar Capon, from The Parables of Grace:
Christian education is not the communication of correct views about what the various works and words of Jesus might mean; rather, it is the stocking of the imagination with the icons of those works and the words themselves. It is most successfully accomplished, therefore, not by catechisms that purport to produce understanding, but by stories that hang the icons, understood or not, on the walls of the mind.
Sally Lloyd Jones, from The Jesus Storybook Bible:
The Bible is most of all a Story . . . . It’s the most wonderful of fairy tales that has come true in real life! You see, the best thing about this Story is . . . . it’s true. There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling one Big Story. The Story of how God loves God’s children and comes to rescue them.
There is a lot of thinking happening outside of Sunday morning that informs what happens in the short time we gather each week. We ask questions like . . .
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What is important about the Christian Faith?
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What do we want to pass on to children and what can we (or should we) leave behind of the theological and cultural grime that has accrued over the centuries?
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What do Jesus’ words about children mean for how we work with them?
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What messages are we sending (whether we’re aware of them or not) through the materials that we use, through things like the layout of the room or other elements of the place and time we spend with the children?
We’ll never stop working through all of this, of course! But here are some of our current thoughts and goals.
The word Gospel can also be translated “good story,” so we focus on storytelling, which sinks deeper into our souls than plain lessons. Jesus was a storyteller, but his listeners didn’t always understand what he was trying to communicate. At least, not right away! In the same way, we hear stories as children that we might not understand until we are a teen or an adult. (And some Bible stories should wait until one is an adult!) Flannery O’Connor once said, “A story is good when you continue to see more and more in it, and when it continues to escape you.” As we learn, we hear the same Bible stories over and over, and we spiral gradually into a deeper understanding.
We are made in the image of God, the Creator, so children should have time and materials to create from their God-given imaginations. The counter-cultural message of Christianity is that we are meant to be creators, not just consumers. So as an act of resistance against the shallow narrative of consumerism, the crafts and materials we use for play and storytelling should uphold the good story of God’s creation.
God made the world and saw that it was good. In response, we are trying to use the “good” stuff of the earth, creating with clay and homemade playdough, wood and felted wool. As we use up and replace our craft supplies made from plastic and non-recyclable single use items, we’re moving towards a more Waldorf-style approach to materials, using found objects like driftwood, and art supplies like beeswax crayons.
Though there is a lot of fun (and a fair amount of silliness), our aim at Place Kids is not primarily to entertain. Rather, our goal is to invite children into a space that feels holy (even if it’s just for a moment or two). The shared snack is intended to be a sacred meal, a precursor (like all shared meals) to Communion, so we use pottery cups, home sewn napkins (that the children indigo dyed themselves!), and homemade muffins, buns, or cookies prepared by Place members.
The Place is striving to be an inclusive community, so in the Place Kids program we celebrate a diversity of families, acknowledging Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Grandparents Day, Single Parents Day, and Nonbinary Parents Day.
The United Commons (where The Place meets) is situated in an area where some are experiencing food and shelter insecurity, so the Place Kids program has started working with the North Park Neighbourhood Association to help where we can (in age appropriate ways). As an example, in the spring of 2026 the children led a bake sale (and ‘bake barter’) to gather lots and lots of peanut butter. The North Park Neighbourhood Association said that peanut butter is one of the best ways to get protein to the neighbourhood residents they support, and they were very thankful for the children’s contribution!
The children are an important part of The Place community, not just an add-on. To make that clear, several times a year we have “All Ages” services where everyone is able to participate. These services have contemplative crafts, activities, and a story accessible to all ages. We also have semi-regular community lunches where the children participate by making bouquets for the tables, baking biscuits, and decorating cookies to share.
At The Place we spend a lot of time focussing on the Church Year, which provides a helpful framework for both children and adults. Every year we anticipate the birth of Jesus during Advent, and we make Lenten/Easter Gardens to take home as a physical reminder of The Resurrection. Our hope is that as we move through the circle of the Church Year, we can keep growing toward a deeper knowledge of the all-encompassing Love of Jesus.
And at all times, we hope the underlying messages that The Place kids receive are:
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They are loved for who they are.
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They are an important part of our community.
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They are also part of the larger Christian community.
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And (along with the rest of us!) they are imperfect creatures who are deeply loved by God.
Thank you for reading!
