• Taking It Home handout
• Clear bowl to serve as a chalice
• A small, hardy plant (such as a spider plant or shamrock plant)
• Optional: Small table
• Optional: Newsprint, markers and tape

• Adapt Taking It Home for your group. Prepare copies or email to adult participants and parents.
• Place the chalice bowl and plant where all can gather around it.
• Optional: Write the closing words on newsprint, and post.

Gather the group. Briefly summarize the workshop:

Today we explored plant life. We heard a story and saw for ourselves why we need to take our responsibility to plant life seriously. Plants and flowers can be beautiful. They also provide us and other animals with food to eat and oxygen to breathe. Without water, plants cannot survive. Take a moment to be grateful to water and to plants.

Give participants a moment in silence. Then, invite participants to offer a thought about what moved them during this workshop. Say something like:

Think about our time together. What will you take with you as we leave today?

Allow a moment for reflection. Then invite volunteers to answer. Then say:

We will recycle our chalice water by nurturing our plant.

Pour the water from the chalice bowl into the plant.

As you pour, recite the closing words:

We leave our Gather the Spirit friends now, but not our Gather the Spirit friendships. May they be with us until we meet again.

Distribute the Taking It Home handouts you have prepared.