Great games for groups

I'm about to go semi-public on this so let it be know that you first heard it here.

Take one large tarpaulin and set out a grid on it with electricians' tape.  Just like this...

My one worked out to be 10 by 7 squares but it's not imperative to have those dimensions.  It's back and knee breaking work but worth it because then you can play...

Giant Connect Four

Equipment: 
The grid.  Two or more sets of disposable plastic plates - each set needs to be a different colour and I have had four sets successfully on the go with large groups.

The basic game:
The teams take turns to put a plate anywhere on the grid.
The aim is to get four plates in a row - horizontal, vertical or diagonal - while blocking the other teams' attempts at doing the same.  Plates can be placed anywhere on the grid.

Variations:
Make it three in a row with younger children.
The actual game of "Connect Four" is played vertically and coins drop to the lowest level.  With older children pretend that gravity is involved and work from the baseline, building the puzzle up, rather than placing the plates anywhere on the grid.

The Maze Game

Equipment: 
The grid.  A small copy of the grid with a trail marked from one side to the other - kept out of view from the children.  A whistle.

	*
	*	*
		*	*	*
				*
				*
			*	*
		*	*
		*

(This is a sample trail.  Make the trails as simple or complex as is appropriate for the group.)

The basic game:
The aim of the game is to step, square by square, from one side of the grid to the other.  The children take turns.  If they step into a square and it's on the pathway then there is no sound and they are free to take another step - vertical or horizontal.  If they step off the track the leader blows the whistle and the child is out.  The next child tries to retrace the footsteps and get a bit further along the track.  The winner is the one who gets right across the grid following the path.  The leader can tell them where the starting square is...or not.

Variation:
Play in teams.  The children still take turns, team by team, but during their turn they will get some assistance from their fellow team members.

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These games have been thoroughly tested and loved by Sunday School, Youth Group, after school Kids Club and Holiday Bible Club groups, a school class and a group of adults over the last twelve months.

Yours to use.  You're very welcome.
 

Today's two discoveries

# 1  If you want to use the joyfully expanded version of the Made by Joel nativity scene but want to save card and also time at the photocopier it is possible, with some cutting and pasting old school style (you know, scissors and glue), to fit everything from the three sheets onto two pages.

# 2 The bypass feeder on the photocopier actually takes a small stack of card and feeds it in all by itself.  You don't have to hand feed every single one of the 140 sheets of card individually.  That gets the job done in about a billionth of the time it takes to hand feed individual sheets and then press the copy button 140 times.

Good times.

New stuff for Sunday School. Well, new to me.

Speaking of new things I'm loving, I stumbled upon an online Sunday School curriculum called Kids' Sunday School Place.  I was looking around for a few lessons about the Bible - 66 books, two sections, different genres, good for training and making wise and so on - and came upon this site in my search. 

Kids' Sunday School Place offers a number of complete units online for free - some from each of their range of Old Testament, New Testament, topical and special occasions categories.  If you want to access all of the units there is an annual membership of $US39, which seems a pretty small price to pay. 

I haven't looked right through the site yet but what I have surveyed - and trialled - has been superb.  Great lessons which include good introductory activities, a fantastic little Bible study (I'm a big proponent of getting kids to look up real verses in the real Bible at Sunday School), follow up activities including work sheets, games, practical activities and crafts (usually a couple of substantial activities to choose from) and good back up materials including all the necessary blackline masters. 

I've just finished the "about the Bible" unit and in a week or two will head into some of their Christmas lessons.  Very happy.  I like their approach.  A lot.

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Now speaking of Christmas, and Sunday School, here is the most amazing thing.  A cardboard cut out nativity scene. 

I used this in Sunday School last year and am taking it to my Scripture classes this year.  It does require a bit of patience to hand feed endless sheets of card through the photocopier...but so worth the investment in time.

You can get the original nativity scene or the joyfully expanded nativity scene and even the travel size nativity scene.

And when you are done with Christmas there are loads of other cool things to be found on this site to keep small (and big) people amused for hours.

The year that term three week seven came early

That certain week that happens every year when the shine of being the oldest kids in the school wears off, suddenly a handful of them are taller than their teachers, their compasses are pointed towards high school (for better or for worse depending on whether the prospect fills you with excitement or fear - but both manifest poorly) and they go off the boil...it happened.  In the fourth week of term.  Three weeks early to my way of thinking. 

So what's a Scripture teacher to do?  Four things.

Firstly, thank God for the two and nearly a half terms of great teaching time before it all got hard.  Secondly pray for the children and their class teachers - both need prayer at this point.  Thirdly, pull out that intensely complicated geometric colouring in sheet that has been waiting in the wings all year just for this moment. 



I chose something like this...but FAR more complicated.

The kids went off the boil two weeks ago.  Not good.  Especially as I wasn't expecting it that particular day.  So last week I pulled out my colouring pages. 

"You colour this while I tell you today's story...and no two adjoining spaces are to be the same colour."

Met with shock and horror. 

"That's right.  But if you trust me on this one and do it in this kind of detail the pictures will look absolutely amazing when you are done.  And by the way, there is no rush.  Unlike so many other things I do when I am in your classroom, this isn't a race."

Last week went supremely well and I figure I have secured two or three more lessons of peace because all of the classes were told, in front of their classroom teachers, that the pictures were only allowed out of their trays for Scripture classes.

After that there are the last few lessons in the book - how the Bible fits together, the Ten Commandments and a lesson on prayer - all of which I LOVE teaching.  And then the Christmas lessons which are all sorts of fun.  I think we should be OK for the year.

And then the fourth thing for a Scripture teacher to do?  Keep praying that the gospel seeds that are being sown in classrooms here and elsewhere will at some point take root, grow and flourish.  This is good work.

Holiday Bible Club

A display connected to the theme for the week.

Every year during the first week of the July school holidays our church runs a Holiday Bible Club for primary school aged children.  This has been happening here for a long time - 24 or 25 years I've heard it said - so it's a well oiled machine.  A couple of dear ones have asked me to blog about it so here goes.

What it looks like

HBC runs for five mornings 9am to 12pm.  On the first four days (Monday to Thursday) it looks like this...

9:00 - 9:15  Registration and drop off.  While that is happening the children are ushered into the hall (via the church so that they can see what a church looks like) to colour in a picture connected with the day's story.  The pictures are glued onto a mural that builds up over the week along a big section of the hall wall.

9:15 - 9:45  The children go outside for fast, furious, non-stop action games.  That is, the children are run ragged for half an hour to burn off energy so that they're ready to sit still and listen.

9:45 - 10:45  Teaching time.  We have someone from OAC Ministries come each year to run this hour of Bible teaching through stories, games, quizzes, puppets and all sorts of fun.  The folk at OAC are really, REALLY good at what they do.  Outsourcing the teaching to experts in the field frees us up to make sure the rest of the programme is as good as we can make it.

10:45 - 11:00  Morning tea.  Our trusty team in the church kitchen put on a morning tea fit for a birthday party five mornings in a row.

Craft for Daniel in the lions' den

11:00 - 11:50  The children do a craft activity connected with the theme of the teaching time.  We try to have someone ready to play games with those who finish early so that everyone is kept busy and occupied right up until the last moment.

11:50-12:00  Final notices, a prayer and off the children go home with their parents.


On the Friday we reverse the order and invite the parents to join with their children from 10:30am.
9:00 - 9:15  Registration and colouring in.
9:15 - 9:45  Action games
9:45 - 10:30  Craft
10:30 - 11:00  Parents, children and leaders have morning tea together.
11:00 - 11:50  Teaching time - which includes a bit of summary of the week, new material and a presentation of the Gospel for the children and their parents, all at the skillful hands of the OAC presenters.
11:50 - 12:00  Wrap up, prayers and farewells.

Nuts and bolts

Teaching time
Each year we run to the theme provided to us by our speakers.  This year it was Heroes from the Bible.  Other recent themes have included The Beatitudes, The Fruit of the Spirit, Stories Jesus Told and a theme that tied in with the Olympics.  There is memory verse for each day.

To charge or not to charge
There is debate about this.  But we charge $5 per day per child with all sorts of exceptions for differing circumstances.  The money collected goes towards paying for OAC to come and for some reimbursement for craft and food costs where required.

Dress up day
We didn't do it this year, but some years we have a dress-up day, usually on the Thursday.  Last year when we did the Beatitudes everyone got to come in yellow and black (bee colours) and we even had a few dressed up as bees.

Correspondence
We send a letter of invitation during term two to children who have attended HBC in the last three years.  Each day of HBC the children take home a letter which includes a summary of the day's story and teaching, the memory verse for the day, advanced notice for the Friday morning tea arrangements, notices about the bookstall running and any other thing we might need to advise and contact details for the church.  And every child who attends receives a letter by mail during the first week back at school thanking them for their attendance, reminding them of the things we learned, wishing them well for the term ahead and with some information about our normal Sunday services.

Advertising
Other advertising is via flyers to all the students who do Scripture in the local primary school, posters in the local shops and library and letters are sent to local churches and nearby schools for their newsletters. 

That's it in a nutshell.  Seems so straight forward when you put it like that.  :-) Let me know if you want more info, and if anyone else has these sort of programmes running at their church, please let me know what themes you have used.  I'd be interested to collect ideas for future reference.

Making that transition

On Saturday I went to a conference for people involved in children's ministry.  It's an annual event - I went last year and then wrote this post about helping children to transition from kids church into the life of the big church. 

This year's keynote speaker spoke in passing about the transition topic and said that in his church, at the end of primary school, he was taken aside (the end of his time in Sunday School) and asked, "Now that you are finishing up with Sunday School and moving to church, what do you think you would like to do to serve the church?"   He gave an answer and over the next three years was taken under the relevant person's wing and trained up for that particular area of service.  By the time he was into his last couple of years of high school he was a fully functional, serving member of his church and has never looked back.

He assumed, as he grew up, that this is what all churches did (and do.)  But they don't. 

It's so simple.  It's so obvious that it seems almost silly to even mention it.  And yet I am so glad he said it in all its simplicity.

One last Christmas idea (to store up for next year) and a request

One of the fun things I did on Christmas day was to run some activities for the kids who came to church in the morning.  I've done this for a few years - but lest you think me very virtuous, let me tell you I have had an extremely checkered past in this department.  There was the year I planned fabulous activities and only two kids turned up to church.  The following year I didn't plan anything (thinking I would just play with the two kids) and loads of children came.  There was the year of making Christmas cards (boring...already done that at school and by Christmas day it is too late) and the year I was so tired that all I could muster up were a few colouring in sheets (the less said about that one the better).  Last year we did a simple craft activity which went down very well.

Running the kids' activities on Christmas day is always a bit hit and miss.  You never know how many kids will be there.  And you never know what shape the kids will be in.  Some years they arrive full of beans.  Some years they arrive spent from nights of excitement-induced lack of sleep, an early start and possibly crazed from too much sugar already and it is only 9am!  There are the kids who have already opened their presents (and very possibly would rather be at home playing with them) and the kids who are impatient for church to finish because they are yet to get near their Christmas tree.  So many variables.

A few weeks ago I made the conscious decision to give some enerygy to this part of Christmas day this year.  We played party games.

Game # 1 - the treasure hunt

I pulled out the stable from the old Vegie Tales nativity set from a gift bag and asked the children what it was.  Then I sent them off to find all the characters, having hidden them all around the hall before church.  Once all the pieces were found the children set up the scene, telling me the story along the way.

Game # 2 - the guessing game

I'd taken six decorations from our tree and put them in a bag.  The children took turns to put their hand in the bag and guess what one of the decorations was by touch.  As they guessed them we pulled them out one by one and had a Christmas related discussion.  The decorations included a star, two angels (because one visited Mary but a host of them visited the shepherds), a bell, a tree and a stocking (the last three giving rise to good chats about traditions, church and giving.)

Game # 3 - pass the parcel

This was especially good for the children who hadn't yet opened anything that morning.  We sat in a circle and rolled a dice, passing the parcel around the number of people as shown on the dice.  Underneath each layer there was a question to answer or an instruction to carry out (by the child who had done the unwrapping and sometimes others chipped in as well, which was nice.)  The layers went as follows...

Layer 1 - What is your favourite thing about Christmas?
Layer 2 - What is your favourite Christmas song?
Layer 3 - What is your favourite Christmas food?
Layer 4 - This layer had a small prize with the instruction, "Because it is nice to give presents at Christmas time, give this prize to someone else in the group" (leading to a discussion about giving as well as receiving.)
Layer 5 - Tell us a short version of the Christmas story.  Make sure you include Gabriel and Mary, the journey to Bethlehem, Jesus born in the stable, shepherds and angels and wise men and the star.  Or give this task to someone else to do. 
Layer 6 - Give the parcel to the person who told the Christmas story and tell them they are allowed to open the next layer.
Final Layer - there were two small bags of chocolate coins at this point and a note that said, "Well done for telling us the Christmas story.  Here is prize for you to take home and one to share with everyone now."  And then we shared out the chocolates amongst the group.

This done, there were just a few minutes left - long enough to play three quick running around games - and then the parents were out to fetch their kids and take them onto the rest of their Christmas day events.  It was a great morning.  The kids were engaged and I think they all had a good time.

So here is the question.  If you organised something for kids at church on Christmas day (or if you have kids and they had something organised for them) could you please please please share what you/they did with me in the comments?  Because I am sure I will doing this gig another time and I'm always on the lookout for new ideas.

Three ways into the Christmas story

If you are in the business of having to do a kids' Christmas talk this year maybe one of these might help...three of the ways I have told the Christmas story in Scripture this year. 

 

# 1...Jesus is the best gift of all.

 

For this rendition I put a nativity set into a gift box or gift bag.  Then it is a matter of telling the story and pulling the bits and pieces out of the bag as they come up in the story, starting with Mary being visited by the angel, and building up the scene as you go. 

When I do this I usually use this nativity scene - a very plastic (non-breakable) Veggie Tales set.  The kids at school, who aren't familiar with Veggie Tales, are very amused that all the characters are vegies and it is enough to hold even the big kids through the telling of a familiar story.

(I remember being aghast when my husband brought this set home, having purchased it for next to nothing from the markdown shelf at a certain Christian bookstore.  Ironically it is the nativity set that our boys played with the most when they were young and I use it all the time now as a teaching resource at this time time of the year.  So to my husband...apologies for that look of absolute horror when you walked in the door with this little purchase.)
 

At the end of the story you ask why the nativity scene was in a gift box and explain that God gave us the best gift of all in sending Jesus to earth a baby to die on a cross a man so that we might be forgiven for all our sins.  Jesus is the best gift of all.

 

 

# 2...The "So you think you know the Christmas story" super quiz

 

This is great for bigger kids who really think they know it all.  You ask the following six questions and get the children to write down their answers.

 

 

1.  When Mary first heard that she was going to be the mother of God's Son, she heard the news from an angel.  What was the angel's name? (Gabriel)

2.  When it came time for Jesus to be born Joseph and Mary had to travel to Bethlehem.  Why did they have to go there? (To take part in the census.)

3.  Was Jesus born in a manger or put in a manger after he was born? (Put in the manger...born in the stable.)

4.  After he was born Jesus had two lots of visitors - some shepherds and some wise men.  Who came first or did they come at the same time? (Shepherds first, wise men second.)

5.  How did the shepherds and the wise men know that Jesus had been born?  How did God announce the news? (Angels for the shepherds and the star for the wise men.)

6.  When the wise men visited they brought presents.  What were the presents?  And by the way, how many wise men were there? (Gold, frankincense and myrrh.  And we don't know how many wise men.  The Bible just says "the wise men".  There were three gifts but there may not have been three wise men.)

You then provide the answers by telling the story, revealing the answers as you go, dispelling a few myths generated by carols and Christmas cards along the way.   (There is also the issue of the age of Jesus when he was visited by the wise men.  Head down that path if you want to take in the Herod story during your session because there is a bit of mythbusting to be done there too.)

 

 

#3...Christmas (and in fact the whole story of the Bible depending how far you want to take it) through the lense of the wise men's gifts.
 

 

 

Start by asking what sorts of presents babies and small children receive.  Then put the wise men in their context (ah, that would mean a quick retell of the story!!) and head on into your main discussion - about the highly unusual gifts Jesus received from the wise men. 

 

Gold is a precious metal - the metal of kings - pointing to the fact that Jesus is the King of kings.

Frankincense is the incense used by the high priest, pointing to Jesus as the great High Priest. 

Myrrh is embalming oil, used only for royalty, pointing to his important death. 

Through the themes of King, Priest and Jesus' death you can take the story as far, wide and deep as time and the age of your audience will allow. 

 

But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. 

Luke 2:10,11

Teaching kids about God - fun with minties and marshmallows

Teaching kids about God.  Photo by Cathy

Sometimes, if the term challenge is getting a bit tired or the class is getting a bit tired - and take it from me, children in their final year of primary school start getting a bit on the tired side about half way through term three - it is a good idea to throw in a bit of one-off fun just to wake everyone up and get them all back on board again. 

So one lesson last term I took in a big bowl of minties to my Scripture classes. 

Activity one - everyone got a mintie with strict instructions not to open it or eat it.  The kids had to balance their mintie on their head while I started the lesson.  If it fell off their head they were out of the game and it was a competition to see who could balance it for the longest.  When it had gone on for too long I got the final contenders standing, turning circles and doing star jumps until we had a winner. Everyone still had to keep their mintie wrapped and on the top of their desk.  All the winner got was the glory, which is a lesson in itself for some kids.

Activity two - reading the Bible passage for the day.  Three children came out the front to read.  Each child had to read two verses of the six verse passage while balancing a mintie on their head.  Then three more children had to read the same passage (two verses each) while balancing two minties on their head.  As the passage was about being kind to one another, they got to keep one mintie and give the other away to a friend.  Then three more children had to read the passage (two verses each) with an unwrapped mintie poised between their teeth.  Without dribbling.  Easy way to get the children to hear the passage three times without getting bored, although the third reading was less clear than the first two renderings... 

Activity three - two children up the front (a boy and a girl or one from each side of the classroom for a bit of competition) seeing how many times they could throw their mintie up in the air, clap and catch it in the space of 39 seconds (because there are 39 books in the Old Testament.)  This was helpful for giving the kids a break midway through the discussion about the passage.

Activity four - at the end of the lesson, as the grand reward, eat the mintie and do the old tearing the mintie wrapper competition to see who can get the longest strip.  In only a minute because time is short in a 30 minute lesson.

No book work done that lesson.  But lots of Bible reading and discussion.  And the children remembered the content of the lesson the following week.

Warning:  Minties are very chewy lollies.  I wouldn't use them in classes with young children who have mouths full of wobbly teeth.  And always get permission from the classroom teacher before doling out vast quantities of lollies. 

At about the same time my Sunday School class was also getting a bit tired so I brought along a big bag of marshmallows.  Marshmallows, because I have a couple of young children with lots of wobbly teeth in their mouths.  We spent some time practising memory verses with marshmallows balanced on our tongues.  You could do the "fluffy bunny" game by seeing how many marshmallows you can fit inside your cheeks and still speak/recite your memory verse but this seems such a scurrilous waste of marshmallows to me.

Then a little later on we switched out all the lights in the hall (evening a.k.a. 5pm church) and roasted marshmallows on satay sticks over tea light candles.  While we were sitting around our "campfire" we chatted about what we'd been learning during the term, about what it is like to be a Christian, about prayer and lots of other good things.  We reconnected as a group and it has been so much better ever since.

Moral of the story - sometimes you just have to pull out something out of the ordinary to shift things back to where they work best.  And it can take a surprisingly simple gesture to do so.

Teaching kids about God - another timed challenge

Teaching kids about God.

Photo by Cathy

Back here I presented a few timed challenges I have used in Scripture and Sunday School lessons.  The point of them is to inject some quick fun into a lesson - good for building relationships and for breaking up the teaching time so that kids can keep their concentration.

During third term I used this one for the first time...

...a ball tied to a cup with a piece of elastic.  This particular ball (if you can call it that) lights up on impact just to make it a little bit more fun.  The idea of the challenge is to count how many times you can catch the ball in the cup in a specified length of time.  In our case, we used the old 27 seconds (because that's how many books there are in the New Testament) and the record was an astonishing 18. 

I gave lots of reasons for using funny little challenges during teaching times with kids here.  Another reason is that something like this doesn't require a lot of equipment, which is especially excellent for Scripture teachers who are lugging of box of tricks from one classroom to another, trying to run 30 minute lessons with no turn around between classes.  In these instances it is very good to keep things simple.

WARNING:  Three of the classrooms I teach in had interactive whiteboards installed during the term.  It is important to position any participant of this activity well clear of low hanging data projectors (or ceiling fans or displays of artwork strung across the classroom).  Taking out the classroom data projector is very bad PR for a Scripture teacher.

Teaching kids about God - timed challenges

Teaching kids about God

Teaching kids about God photo by Cathy.  Thanks Cathy!!

Another thing I do to keep Scripture classes at school (30 minute lessons) and Sunday school classes (40 to 60 minutes) humming along is to use timed challenges throughout each lesson.  I have a chart where I record everyone's best times and it is highly competitive.

Here's THE WHAT...and then I will explain the HOW and the WHY.

The Shape Sorter

Pull out this old toy from the toddler toy box.  Time how long it takes to put the shapes in - surprisingly hard when you are under pressure.  But for those with a cool head and the right strategy, it is possible to do it in 14 seconds!

Apple Stacking

Bring a bag of apples - you won't need any more than eight apples from my experience - and see how many you can stack in a set amount of time.  I did this last term and gave the kids 27 seconds (because there are 27 books in the New Testament...and they all know that fact now) so that it wouldn't drag out for too long.  Record - five.

Cup Stacking

You need ten plastic cups.  The idea is to time how long it takes to stack them up - four at the bottom, then three, then two, then one - then put your hands on your head and then unstack them back into a pile of cups and yell "FINISHED!"  It's pretty quick so the yelling at the end helps for time keeping.  And kids think it is fun to yell in class.  If you google CUP STACKING you will see some pretty amazing examples of this challenge.  Mine is a very simplified version but they love it. 

The Buzzer

A friend found this one for me.  You have to ease the hand piece around the wire without letting the circle of the hand piece touch the wire.  Some of these gadgets buzz or beep if the circle makes contact with the wire.  This particular one laughs at you hysterically.   Time how long it takes to get from end to the other - and you are disqualified if it laughs at you.  Most don't get a time.  The laughing seems to diffuse the frustration and disappointment.

Block Jigsaw

This doesn't work in a classroom because it is too small to be seen from the back.  All classroom competitions need to be visible by all or else they fail monumentally.  Take it from me.  I know.  But this is great to use with a smaller group.  They get to find and assemble the animal (with or without a guide picture, depending on how tricky you want to make it) and you time how long it takes.  I have two sets of these so sometimes I bring out both sets and run this challenge as a race rather than individually timing them - with evenly matched children and only with robust kids who can cope with the fact that one will win and one will lose.

THE HOW

1.  I run one of these challenges in Scripture classes every week across a whole term - with a new challenge each term.  Every child who wants to participate is timed.  This takes a few weeks and their time is recorded on a chart.  When everyone has had a go I choose some to have  a second go to beat the class or their own personal record.  Sometimes I choose children at random to have a go, sometimes a child who needs a boost and sometimes I choose someone as a reward for good class participation.  At least one child will have a go of the current challenge at every lesson, week in and week out. 

2.  In Sunday School I run a challenge for a month at a time.  Every week the kids can have a go to beat their own score or break the group's record.  I run a monthly challenge two or three times a year - injecting one when things are getting a bit flat and need some pepping up.

3.  Rather than running a challenge over a long period of time, these can be used as a one off - the one who gets the best time gets a prize.  Or run along the lines of "a minute to win it" - if they do the challenge in a minute...or whatever time you set...they win the prize.  Or run it as a "minute to win it" across the whole term if you have a good supply of prizes - that probably works better with younger children.

4.  Respect the child who doesn't want to have a go.  For a quiet few, they won't want to be exposed at the front of the group like this.  And that is OK.

THE WHY

These challenges have absolutely nothing to do with teaching kids about God.  But here are ten quick reasons why I use them.

1.  They are quick - they don't rob too much time from a lesson.
2.  They inject some fun into the lesson. 
3.  Because they are fun it helps in building good relationships.
4.  And it sets a good dynamic in the room
5.  So the kids look forward to your lesson with them.
6.  And that means you are well underway to winning the battle with discipline.
7.  Which means more time to teach.
8.  And more opportunity to be kind, to show love and to demonstrate warmth.
9.  If done ever single week then it becomes a constant.  It's a bit like when you hear the dulcet tones of the West Wing theme music (or insert your own favourite TV series) at the beginning of each episode and it excites and prepares your mind for what is coming next.  Think Pavlov's dog.
10.  That then helps the kids to transition quickly into your lesson - which means less wasted time.  It is five or ten minutes time well spent - which means twenty or more good teaching minutes in a thirty minute class.

Please know that not every lesson works perfectly for me.  Far from it.  My last lesson today would testify to that.  But I have had a much better strike rate, particularly with school Scripture, since I started doing this.

Teaching kids about God - get them to multitask

Picture by Cathy

A little while ago I came into possession of a document I wrote ten or more years ago called "The Top Twenty Teaching Tips for Children's Church Teachers."  I've just read over it and I'm interested to find that I would probably knock out five, maybe ten, of the tips I listed.  Amazing what a difference a decade will make.  And there is one tip - one that I would put close to the top these day - that isn't mentioned at all in the list.

Get the kids to multitask.

I teach a few Scripture classes each week at our local primary school.  In recent weeks I have had more bad lessons than good.  I take the upper primary classes and in my experience, things start getting difficult with these groups about three weeks before the end of term three - so it was a bit disconcerting when things started going downhill so early on in the year.  It could make for a very long and difficult year.  I decided I had to do something to turn things around.  And quickly.

So I did what I do in Sunday School.  I got them to multitask.

When I teach Sunday School and I need the children to listen for a long time (big story, complicated point to explain, it's a serious lesson and breaking up the talking with a game just won't work) I often bring out a big bowl of popcorn.  Children will listen for as long as you want to talk if they have something to eat.  (You do have to get over the fact that at least one child will eat as if they hadn't been fed for a whole week, but other than that and potential popcorn allergies, this strategy is foolproof.)  Other things that work include playdough or a small pile of Lego bricks with instructions to build a specific thing.

But popcorn, playdough and Lego don't work in a school classroom.  I tried popcorn once.  In small individual bags.  That story is probably best left right there... 

However the principle behind the popcorn still stands.  Something that keeps hands busy and distracts either the mind or the mouth will give the teacher enough time to tell the story/finish a sentence without having to discipline someone/get through five minutes of the lesson with a happy voice and a happy face in order to shift the previously unpleasant mood of the class/______________ (fill in the gap.)

So I went to dear old Google Images and typed in "Detailed Geometric Colouring Pages" and got something like this.

It wasn't this one exactly because every time I google these words I get a completely different set of pictures.  Which is good.  Endless possibilities.

Anyway, I printed one off, photocopied it and went to my lessons.  After a pretty good opening (a couple of rounds of our apple stacking challenge and then the story about how I thought I was going to be killed at the hands of two bikies one evening when I was about 20 and my car broke down in the middle of an intersection at night will hold most children...and yes, it did have something to do with the Scripture lesson I was teaching) it was time to get down to serious business and on cue, they started in on me. 

So I whipped out my pictures, gave the instruction that no two bits were to be coloured in the same colour and kept teaching.  They coloured.  They listened.  They answered questions - without calling out.  And when it was needed, they put their pictures aside to do five minutes of writing in their workbooks.  Because they knew what had happened in the Bible story and they were calm.  The colouring in picture had nothing to do with the lesson at all.  All it did was distract them from the task of winding me up for long enough to get the content of the lesson across.

Twenty years ago (oh my...) when I was a classroom teacher I would read from a novel to my class every day.  Either before lunch or just before the end of school.  And I would make sure they had cleared their desks completely before I started.  There was no fiddling with things, drawing while they were listening, nothing.  I wanted them to do nothing but listen and use their imaginations as I read.  And they did it.  Not because I was a tyrant about it.  They could just do it, with a little bit of training at the beginning of the year.  And that is why mulitasking didn't rate a mention on my Top Twenty List.  It wasn't needed and in my humble opinion, it just didn't help things along.

But I don't know if children would be able to do that now.  Sure, some can.  But not whole classrooms full of children.  Not without lots and lots of training - in concentration and respect.  And the 30 minute Scripture lesson is not the time of the week for that.  So instead, multitasking is a technique that keeps hands and minds out of mischief  and allows for the lesson to proceed.  It won't work every week.  And this won't work week after week.  But, thanks be to God, it worked this week for me.  We had a nice time together and that means that I stand a fair chance of having a good week with them next week as well.

 

Teaching Kids about God

I know there are a few people out there in blogosphere who either teach Sunday School or Scripture lessons so I thought I might start an occasional series offering some tips and tricks and the odd bit of content, that I have stumbled upon and found helpful.  I know I was deeply grateful and encouraged by Simone's blog at Easter time when she posted some children's talk ideas at the eleventh hour.  I was certainly struggling at the eleventh hour before Good Friday this year and was greatly encouraged by her post at that very moment. (Thanks Simone, if you are reading this!)

And I hope that as I share bits and pieces here and there (as I said, I am planning that this will be an occasional series rather than a "post after post" type arrangement) that someone out there, maybe struggling with their teaching, might be encouraged to press on.

What follows right now is a post on getting kids to multitask to get the ball rolling, inspired by a dramatic turn around in my Scripture classes this week.

And I need some help.  Anyone got an idea for a series title that captures the imagination a bit more than "Teaching Kids about God"?   It's alright, but I think we can do better.  And any ideas for a signature photo for this series?

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Update:  Here is the photo that will accompany these posts.  Thank you so much to Cathy.



Why youth stay in church when they grow up

The post Making the transition from children's ministry to church, on the topic of seeing children make the transition into church and into a faith of their own, included a blend of notes I'd taken at a recent children's ministry conference and some personal thoughts.  The "take home" message from the workshop and the post that followed was that credible relationships between adults and children in church seems to be important.

But there's more!  Because being in church and staying in church is not just about relationships with others.

Jon Nielson is a youth pastor.   In his post Why youth stay in church when they grow up at The Gospel Coalition (HT: the lovely Jean) he considered the drift from church by teenagers and young adults and then made three observations of those in their 20's from his church who are thriving, flourishing Christians.  What seemed to make the difference?

1. They are converted.

Nielson said, "We need to stop talking about 'good kids.' We need to stop being pleased with attendance at youth group and fun retreats. We need to start getting on our knees and praying that the Holy Spirit will do miraculous saving work in the hearts of our students as the Word of God speaks to them...We need to preach, teach, and talk—all the while praying fervently for the miraculous work of regeneration to occur in the hearts and souls of our students."

2. They have been equipped, not entertained.

Which goes back to that idea that that our primary responsibility should be to prepare our children for a lifetime of service to God and His church.  And that is not to say that THERE WILL BE NO MORE FUN!  We teach and train our children in developmentally appropriate ways.   But our ultimate aim is to teach, train, equip and disciple, not to entertain (or babysit.)

3. Their parents preached the gospel to them.

Nielson said, "The common thread that binds together almost every ministry-minded 20-something that I know is abundantly clear: a home where the gospel was not peripheral but absolutely central."

Which reminds me of this quote, "You must never succumb to the thinking that this is the responsibility of the youth group and Sunday school. True conversion of the heart and soul of your children is your God-given charge," from Disciplines of a Godly Family by Barbara Hughes.

This is a very difficult subject to write about because it pulls right at the heart of the grace vs works tension.  It raises guilt.  Or prompts laziness. Ultimately whether a child makes the transition from vicarious faith to a flourishing owned faith rests in God's hands.  And yet, in His grace, God allows us to participate in the process of bringing our children to a saving knowledge of Him.  All rests in God's hands.  But these are some good things to guide us as we pick up our part that He has given us to play.  It is a long term work.  And it rests in prayerful dependence upon our gracious God.