A Prayer for Father’s Day

Father’s Day

For many adults and children alike, Father’s Day is a time to celebrate and spoil their dads, and to rightly say thank you for all they do for them. For others, it can be a difficult time when they are reminded of the failure/absence/loss of their father or father-figure. These feelings are complex and it is important that they are validated and explored, rather than overlooked in a societal wave of paternal well-wishing.

So how does Ten Ten Resources help schools to unpack these issues with their pupils?

Life to the Full

Our Life to the Full programme for primary schools showcases different models of nuclear families representative of modern day life, including but not limited to families with two biological parents, step-parents, split home living situations or single parent families. The concept of trusted ‘Special People’ – adults who children can confide in – is introduced in EYFS and reinforced at an age appropriate level in subsequent Key Stages. Parents and step-parents are often such ‘Special People’, but not always. Children are encouraged to identify for themselves the ‘Special People’ in their lives.

Life to the Full is a fully resourced Scheme of Work in Relationships and Health Education (RHE) for primary schools which embraces and fulfils the statutory curriculum. With a spiral approach to learning where children revisit the same topics at an age-appropriate stage through their school life, the programme teaches children about personal health, physical and emotional well-being, strong emotions, private parts of the body, personal relationships, family structures, trusted adults, growing bodies, puberty, periods, life cycles, the dangers of social media, where babies come from, and an understanding of the Common Good and living in the wider world.

In addition to the family relationships aspect which merits this programme being mentioned as part of an article about Father’s Day, the central message and foundational underpinning of Life to the Full is the Christian faith understanding that our deepest identity is as a child of God – created, chosen and loved by God our Father!

Collective Worship

Through weekly Gospel-inspired assemblies and Daily Classroom Prayers, Ten Ten’s Collective Worship programme helps children to know, trust and have faith in God our Father, and consider how this faith can inspire their words, deeds and interactions.

A Prayer for Father’s Day

Each of us, adult or child, has our own experience of what a father means to us; some may have happy thoughts and others may not. This specially created prayer resource validates and explores these feelings, building to the conclusion that whether we have happy thoughts or sad thoughts about our fathers, the good news is that each of us has a loving Father in heaven.

Jesus tells us that God the Father is faithful, dependable and loving at all times.

Psalm writer King David describes God as a ‘Father to the fatherless.’ (Psalm 68: 5)