Family Time Puzzle Prayer

 Here is an idea for fostering petitionary prayer in your home or classroom.  I wanted to create something that gave a general petition, one each day for a week, for a family or class to pray for.

I happened to have a pile of these color your own puzzles, but they were without the packaging, so unfortunately I can't tell you where to order them from.  You could easily create your own with a sheet of cardstock, using this as an idea for a shape, or creating your own.

My puzzle has seven pieces, which played in perfectly with my plan for family prayer.  On each of the seven pieces, I wrote a petition, and if one were used each day, the puzzle would be put together in a week.

You could definitely just color your puzzle with crayons or markers, but I decided to make this project a little different by doing some color resist.

It is really easy:
Step One: Get out that never-used white crayon and firmly write your petition on one puzzle piece.

Step Two: Color over the crayon with marker or watercolor paint.  Ta-da!  Anywhere you write with the crayon, the color won't stick.

 My pieces just have general petitions, like friends, grandma & grandpa, cousins, aunts & uncles, our country, our priests, and our family.  When these are made by students, they could have specific names or different petitions.

 I then attached magnets to the back of the pieces.  You could purchase magnet strips, but being frugal, I just cut up an old one I had on my fridge.

 The pieces could then be kept in a bag or basket near the family dinner table or place of prayer.  Each day, a child pulls out a piece, the family prays for that petition, and then sticks the piece on the fridge.

 As the week goes on, the puzzle grows...

...until at the end of the week, you have a complete puzzle of all of the things that you have prayed for!  Then the magnets can be taken down and you can start over for another week!