Godly PlayŽ is an imaginative approach to working with children, based on Montessori principles.
The Godly PlayŽ approach helps children explore their faith through story, to gain religious language, and to enhance their spiritual experience through wonder and play. Based on Montessori principles and developed using a spiral curriculum, the Godly PlayŽ method services children through early, middle, and late childhood and beyond. Revised and expanded, The Complete Guide to Godly Play, Volume 3 offers new concepts, new terminology, new illustrations, and a new structure that stem from more than ten years of using Godly PlayŽ with children across the world. 30 to 40 percent of the text is new or revised, including two new lessons, two radically changed lessons, a revised Introduction, and a new full Appendix.
The late Jerome W. Berryman was the founder of Godly Play and had years of experience working with children ages 2–18. Priest, writer, lecturer, and workshop leader, Berryman was, for years, Senior Fellow of the Center for the Theology of Childhood. He was the author of The Complete Guide to Godly Play, Teaching Godly Play, Children and the Theologians, The Spiritual Guidance of Children, and Stories of God at Home.
The Rev. Cheryl V. Minor, Ph.D., is the Director of the Center for the Theology of Childhood, the research and development arm of the Godly Play Foundation. For over 20 years, she has served as Co-Rector at the All Saints' Episcopal Church in Belmont, Massachusetts, where she is privileged to practice Godly Play with children ages three to thirteen. She is the author of Godly Play in Middle and Late Childhood.
Rosemary Beales has been sitting in circles with children for nearly 30 years, including 12 years as chaplain and religion teacher to 400 children at an Episcopal school in Alexandria, Virginia. She received her DMin from Virginia Theological Seminary and is a licensed Godly Play Trainer and an Episcopal priest, currently serving in Fredericksburg, Virginia.