Little Explorers is a relaxed community for babies, pre-school children and the grown-ups who care for them.
On Thursday mornings during school term we share breakfast, stories, singing, play and multisensory ways of exploring faith together — with plenty of time simply to make friends, talk, wonder and be. You don’t need any previous experience of church or Christianity to come. Bring your child, bring yourself, and come as you are.
Breakfast, play, stories and exploration
Come in at your own pace. There is food, free-flow play and space to settle before we gather for story, song and prayer.
"Lovely, well thought out activites... generally just brilliant!"
"Loved the books and sensory art"
"I love the Jammies" [from a toddler]
Exploring faith together
Very small children encounter the world through movement, relationships, senses, repetition, curiosity and play. So that shapes the way we explore faith, here, too.
"For me - I love connecting with grown ups. For [Little One] - exploring freely. Thank you, we love it!"
Friendship matters here too
Little Explorers is not simply an activity for toddlers. Children and grown-ups build relationships, support one another and grow together as part of the wider Network.
"I love the friendly and welcoming atmosphere""
Little Explorers normally meets on at 9.15am Thursday mornings during school term at The Pathfinder Church of England Primary School.
There is always space to drop in to our regular gatherings, so you don’t need to book. But if it’s your first time, it really helps us to know you’re coming and to get some of your details into the register (especially any allergies)
Little Explorers has a familiar rhythm, while no two mornings are exactly the same.
We follow the seasons of the Christian year and explore different stories and questions together, but the basic pattern helps even our youngest Explorers begin to know what comes next.
When you arrive, make yourself at home.
Free-flow activities are ready from the beginning — and quite often something children discover through their play will appear again when we tell the story later.
Breakfast is available for children and grown-ups. There is no need to arrive looking organised or having already eaten!
This first part of the morning also gives everyone time to settle, reconnect and notice how people are doing.
When we are ready, we come together for Circle Time.
We sing familiar nursery rhymes and seasonal songs alongside a simple Christian invitation to worship.
Then we share a Bible story together. Our storytelling is interactive and accessible: there may be objects to hold, actions to copy, pictures, puppets, movement, repeated words, sound, music or things to wonder about.
Sometimes a toddler wanders through the middle of the story. That is completely normal.
After the story, the room opens up again.
There are usually several ways to explore what we have heard: perhaps messy or sensory play, craft, playdough, books, small-world play, music, movement, something outdoors, or a quieter invitation to wonder and pray.
Children can engage at their own pace.
And grown-ups can too.
You might explore an activity with your child, have a conversation with another adult, bring a Big Question to one of the team, or simply sit with a hot drink for a few minutes while your child plays nearby.
There is no expectation that everybody does everything.
Towards the end, we gather again.
We notice some of what has happened, sing together and share an accessible form of prayer.
Children’s own words, discoveries and contributions matter. We are not trying to hurry them towards an adult answer.
Often they help the rest of us notice something about God that we might otherwise have missed.
We finish with a simple blessing before heading back into the rest of the day.
Some people leave straight away. Others stay for a little longer to chat, help pack down or pray with the team.
And then we carry what we have explored back into ordinary family life.
We suggest a donation of £3 per family each week towards the cost of breakfast, room hire and the resources we use together.
But this is genuinely a suggested donation, not an entry fee.
If money is tight, please just come. We would much rather have the pleasure of your company than have cost become a reason to stay away. Every child and grown-up brings something valuable to the community simply by being there.
Some families give each week (perhaps putting cash in the piggie bank), some give for a whole half-term at once, and others choose to give a little more when they can. The Northstowe Church Network also contributes towards Little Explorers, alongside the time generously given by our team and volunteers, so some people simply join the Parish Giving Scheme instead of making specific Little Explorers contributions.
If you are a UK taxpayer, donations may also be eligible for Gift Aid, which allows us to claim extra support at no additional cost to you.
The phrase at the heart of Little Explorers is deliberately: Time for you, your child, and God because Little Explorers is not a club that adults bring children to. But somewhere we explore together.
Babies and young children experience life through their bodies, relationships, senses, questions, repetition and play. We trust that God can be encountered there too. That means faith does not have to begin with being able to sit still, read, give the right answer or understand lots of religious words.
A child might encounter a story by climbing into it, retelling it with toys, repeating one word for the rest of the morning or simply watching from somewhere else in the room. All of that can be exploration.
And grown-ups are exploring as well. Sometimes the deepest conversation of the morning happens while somebody is cutting up the grapes. Or a Bible story opens up a question about parenting, grief, hope, relationships or what we actually believe. Or sometimes somebody is simply exhausted and needs another adult to understand. That all belongs here too.
Little Explorers has a gentle Christian rhythm. We often draw on Diddy Disciples and follow the broad movement of the Christian year, so over time children and grown-ups meet stories of Advent and Christmas, Jesus’ life and teaching, Lent and Easter, Pentecost and the growing life of the Church. Or we take a term to follow a particular strand of stories in the bible, or a theme like "catching from God".
Repetition matters. We return to familiar songs, prayers, gestures and words so that very young children can begin to recognise them and make them their own.
We also make room for the great stories of the Bible — creation and promise, journeys and rescue, prophets and kings, Jesus welcoming and healing, stories Jesus told, the Last Supper, the cross and resurrection, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Sometimes we retell the Last Supper very simply with breadsticks and familiar words. At other times prayer may involve bubbles, water, stones, fabric, light, music, movement or silence.
The point is not to cram information into small children.
It is to give children and adults ways into the Christian story, and space to discover what connections it makes with their own lives.
Some of the way we explore spirituality at Little Explorers has been shaped by Rachel Turner, founder of Parenting for Faith. Her work starts from a simple conviction: children do not have to wait until they are older to develop their own relationship with God, and parents and carers do not need to be experts to help them explore it. Parenting for Faith offers practical tools for helping faith become part of ordinary family life rather than something confined to church activities.
One of those tools is “Chat and Catch.” Chatting means helping children discover that they can communicate with God naturally and in their own way — with words, pictures, actions, songs, silence or simply showing God something. Catching means beginning to notice how God might communicate with us in return. Parenting for Faith deliberately describes this broadly: perhaps through a thought, a feeling, a picture in our imagination, something in the Bible, another person’s words, or another way that helps us notice God.
With babies and pre-school children, this is necessarily playful and gentle.
We might tell a Bible story and then pause to wonder: “I wonder if God wants to show you something?”
A child might choose a colour, draw something, hold an object, point, move, say a single word — or apparently do nothing at all.
We do not tell children what they ought to have heard, and there is no test to pass. Connecting with God is an individual journey, and Parenting for Faith itself stresses that people experience this differently and that finding “catching” difficult is not failure.
For grown-ups, part of the invitation is simply to notice and model. We can let children overhear us saying a quick thank-you to God, wondering aloud about something, or explaining that a Bible verse, thought or moment of peace helped us.
Rachel Turner’s work with babies and toddlers particularly encourages adults to recognise that even very young or non-verbal children can have a spiritual life of their own. Our job is not to manufacture an experience for them, but to create space in which their relationship with God can begin to grow.
That is part of what we mean by “time for you, your child, and God”: not teaching children all the right answers, but learning together to talk, listen, notice and wonder.
Little Explorers is part of Northstowe’s wider Growing Faith journey. Growing Faith asks what can happen when church, school and households listen to and learn from one another, with children and young people at the heart.
For Little Explorers that means recognising that a child's spiritual life does not live in a special religious box. So what happens here can travel home... and what happens at home comes with you through the door to Little Explorers.
As children move towards school age, some of the relationships and ways of exploring that began at Little Explorers also connect naturally with our wider relationship with The Pathfinder School, Worship Gang and Pathfinder Church Club, as well as with Pathfinder Sunday Church
There is no compulsory progression route. We simply want children and families to find connections rather than cliffs as life changes.
As children grow, Pathfinder Church Club offers one possible next space for families connected with The Pathfinder School. Church Club has itself been shaped by things we learned at Little Explorers: intergenerational exploration, storytelling, creativity, wondering, prayer and the conviction that children are participants rather than an audience.
Some families will move into Church Club.
Some will join Pathfinder Church on Sundays.
Some will come to Network festivals and special gatherings.
Some will simply remain friends.
Different children explore, communicate, regulate and connect in different ways.
We are continuing to learn how to make Little Explorers increasingly welcoming to neurodivergent children and adults, including through flexible storytelling, sensory-friendly activities, quieter spaces and freedom to engage differently.
Movement is welcome.
Watching from the edge is welcome.
Repeating the same activity for the whole morning is welcome.
Needing quiet is welcome.
Adults do not need to apologise for their child being a child.
The Pathfinder School has step-free access, accessible toilets and baby-changing facilities, and there is more detailed practical information on our Access & Inclusion page.
Little Explorers is held by a team of adults with experience of church, children, parenting and early-years life.
Our role is to prepare and hold the space, tell stories, create invitations to explore, make breakfast, listen, pray, clean paint off improbable surfaces and help the community grow.
You will also increasingly find people who first came as participants taking a role in helping shape Little Explorers themselves.
Little Explorers began with a small group of very tiny babies, initially drawing on Starting Rite resources. Then those babies grew: crawling, climbing, talking and investigating everything — and Little Explorers grew with them.
That experience still shapes the way we think about this community. Rather than preserving a fixed programme, we keep listening and adapting to the children and grown-ups who actually gather: welcoming new babies, making room for increasingly adventurous pre-schoolers, and allowing the community to change as they do.
And as Little Explorers grow beyond the toddler years, some of what we have learned together is flowing into Pathfinder Church Club and the wider life of the Network.
Little Explorers is shaped around the needs and rhythms of babies, young children and their grown-ups, but it is not separate from the rest of church life.
Here, Christian stories are shared, people pray, relationships deepen and questions are welcomed. Children and adults explore together who God might be and what faith might mean in everyday life, while making space to encounter God as well as one another.
For some families, Little Explorers may be their main expression of church for a season. Others also find themselves at Pathfinder Sundays, Church Club, Network festivals or other gatherings. There is no need to fit everything in, and no expected route through.
Little Explorers is simply one of the ways our shared church takes shape — and one place within a much bigger journey together.
Little Explorers is one of the communities of hope that together make up the Northstowe Church Network.
Alongside Pathfinder Church, the Compline Community and other expressions of our growing life, we share people, prayer, leadership and a commitment to praying, exploring and sharing in Northstowe.
Sometimes our different communities gather together for Christian festivals, meals, pilgrimages, community events and other opportunities to explore and serve.
At other times, each community develops a shape suited to the people gathered there.
You do not need to work out which part of the Network you “belong to”. Come where life connects.
