Tag: children’s ministry

{Advent & Christmas}: KidMin Service Project for College Students

Kathie Phillips

Last month, a great idea was shared at a workshop that I attended at the Engage Conference.  The idea is perfectly suited for the season of Advent & Christmas and will bless your church’s college students.  I’ve expanded a bit on the idea but I’m sure you can add your own twist on the project.

December is a time when college students are studying for final exams before heading out for Christmas break.  Help make the stressful time more enjoyable by providing the students at your church with care packages that your kidmin (and their families) can contribute to and assemble.

Photo Credit: blogs.yu.edu
Photo Credit: blogs.yu.edu

Have kids and families (and your entire congregation for that matter!) donate items such as granola bars, ramen noodles, microwave popcorn, hard candy and chewing gum to help college students survive late-night study sessions.  You might even want to have the children/families write encouraging notes that can be attached to the packages.  Once all items are collected, have your kidmin arrange the items in fun, creative packaging and distribute to the students.

This idea could be as simple or elaborate as you choose but the impact will be priceless to many students who receive the packages.

If you’re looking for more great ideas for Advent & Christmas, be sure to check out my Advent & Christmas Pinterest board.

What fun ways are you, your ministry or your family serving others this Advent/Christmas?  Share your ideas below!

{Advent & Christmas}: Edible Advent Wreath

Kathie Phillips

To kick off the beginning of Advent, our elementary children made edible Advent wreaths in class yesterday.  They loved them and so will the children in your ministry! (Thanks to one of our awesome leaders, Megan, for this fabulous idea.)

Here’s what you’ll need:

  • Donuts with a hole in the middle (any will work but I’d suggest glazed or powdered)
  • Green sugar (we used a store-bought one in a shaker bottle)
  • Jumbo marshmallows
  • Pretzel sticks
  • Twizzlers (we used the pull & peel kind), cut into 2-inch pieces
  • Paper plates

Assembling the ‘wreath’ is fairly simple to talk children through. Here’s what you’ll have them do:

1. Place a donut on a paper plate. (The donut represents the wreath.)

2. Place the marshmallow in the center of the donut. (The marshmallow represents the center candle.)

3. Sprinkle the green sugar on the donut and marshmallow.  Careful…some of our kids were very generous with the sugar.

4.  Stick one pretzel stick in the marshmallow and the remaining pretzel sticks around the donut. (The pretzel sticks represent the candles.)

5. Make flames for the ‘candles’ by peeling apart the Twizzlers and wrapping the pieces around the top of the pretzel sticks.

That’s it!  A simple (and delicious!) way for children to learn about the Advent wreath.

If you’re looking for more great ideas for Advent & Christmas, be sure to check out my Advent & Christmas Pinterest board.

What fun ways are you bringing the Christmas story to life through food?  Share your ideas and pictures below!

{Guest Post}: Four Lessons I Learned While Reviewing Sunday School Curriculum

Kathie Phillips

Note from Kathie: Today’s post, written by Jackie Jamison, who blogs over at Sunday School Helper.  

After two years of haphazardly trying to find curriculum for my elementary Sunday School class without much success, I decided to create a website to help others in my position by providing independent reviews of the major Sunday School curricula on the market today. Sunday School Helper, a curriculum review website, was born.  Through the process of reviewing over 35 curricula, here are the top four lessons that I’ve learned about Sunday School curriculum.

Most Sunday School curriculum is better than you think.

When I started reviewing curriculum, I was skeptical about the quality of most Sunday School curricula.  But when I systematically immersed myself in studying curriculum, I found a lot of material that was genuinely interesting, age-appropriate and biblically sound. There were only a few that I genuinely didn’t like.  It occurred to me that God really is invested in teaching the next generation and has given a lot of people who really love Him the passion and creativity to write curriculum.  A lot of the Sunday School curriculum out there is better than you think.

All curriculum will appear hard to use at first.

It takes a surprising amount of time to make sense of sample materials. This is because it’s hard to absorb a new curriculum format.  ANY curriculum will appear hard to use at first.  Even curricula that are not designed to be used digitally will appear very cumbersome if you’re evaluating them on the computer. Most curricula have lessons with numerous pages (over 10 pages per lesson is not uncommon). This is a lot of material to sort through in a meaningful way. Curriculum is not written to be easy to evaluate—it is written to be easy to teach.

All curriculum requires work to implement—but not that much.

I ran across one curriculum from Group that is literally open-the-box-and-go (which is convenient for a volunteer but makes the quality of the curriculum suffer), but aside from that, all Sunday School curriculum is going to take work to implement. Some will need more modification to work for your group—but there is no such thing as a curriculum you don’t need to customize. It requires work to translate a curriculum to your teaching style, and it requires time to prepare your heart to teach.  With that said, I found most mainstream curriculum was designed to be easy to prepare, and there weren’t lots of differences in how time-consuming the prep work was.

Writing your own curriculum is probably not the best option long-term.

According to the Barna Research Group, 18% of churches write their own curriculum.  I was in this category, too, until I saw the high-caliber of curricula on the market. There are great reasons to write your own lessons sometimes, but over the long haul it takes an enormous amount of time that in many situations could be better used customizing something that’s pretty good to make it great.  With such great options on the market, that have already taken into account different learning styles, and systematically covering the whole Bible, and testing activities to know what will be effective, I have decided to write my own curriculum a lot less.

If you need help finding Sunday School curriculum, read my reviews at Sunday School Helper. I have profiled almost 40 of today’s major Sunday School curricula, and have broken down curriculum by cost, age group, translation, level of creativity, level of depth, and much more.

I am the mom of two young kids, and the director of my church’s children’s ministry. I have been working with children and youth in Sunday School and Christian camp settings for over ten years. I am a freelance writer with a background in natural resource planning and live near Charlottesville, Virginia.

 

Preteen Curriculum: Why We Chose “Preteenministry.net”

Kathie Phillips

This post is Part 4 of Ministry Basics: Selecting Curriculum.  

You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.

Our Preteen Ministry, Route 45, is very special to me.  We launched it from the ground up in Sept 2012 and designed it to be a safe place where 4th & 5th Graders can ask hard questions and begin to own their faith.

What we use, the selection process and why this was our choice

Our team selected curriculum from preteenministry.net.  I blogged about our selection process here.

How the curriculum looks at our church

This is what our current format looks like:

  • Arrival Activities (20 minutes):  After checking themselves in, preteens are able to hang out until our Large Group worship begins.  (They are able to enjoy basketball, air hockey and board games.)
  • Large Group Worship (15 minutes):  Our preteens worship with our 1st-3rd Graders.
  • Large Group Teaching (20 minutes):  After worship, our preteens head back to their area for a teaching time.  Sometimes our teaching time includes a game or object lesson that relates to the Bible story.
  • Small Groups (30 minutes):  During this time, preteens split up into 2 groups: 4th & 5th Grade Girls and 4th & 5th Grade Boys.  Each group has one adult or high school leader who facilitates discussion, application activities and prayer.

What I like

  • The selection of available lesson series is great.
  • The artwork is great, too.  (I use each series’ banner picture as our Facebook page cover photo.)
  • The lessons are engaging and do not look the same each week.  Some weeks, there might be a video clip; some weeks the preteens act out the story.  Other weeks, there might be an object lesson or group art project.
  • The games are fun and tailored specifically to preteens.
  • We hardly ever have to supplement the material.
  • There is flexibility to choose our own lesson schedule, which allows us to customize for our needs.
  • The cost is very affordable, as each series is digital.

What I don’t like

  • I’d like to see take-home resources provided for each lesson.
  • It would also be great to have scripts for social media (i.e. Facebook and Twitter) that accompany each lesson/series.  Right now, I write my own.

Preteenministry.net is a great resource for ministry leaders.  In addition to curriculum for elementary, preteen and junior high ministry, it also provides training materials, games, and other great stuff.  Check it out!  You can click the image above for a direct link to website.

Do you use preteenministry.net for your preteen ministry? What has your experience been?

If you don’t use preteenministry.net, what do you use?  How’s it working for you?