Kids

Curriculum Process

kendra — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:54:24 +0000

If you’ve ever taken on the task of developing and writing curriculum, you know that it is an all-consuming process. Sunday is always coming, so the right content has to be ready.

One of the most important things that we do every week is communicate a message. Not just any message—but a powerful message that has the potential to change lives.

A Whole Mess of Creative Ideas!

Here is a broad outline of our process for creating content:

Scope and Sequence

This step is the most important stage of the process. Everything flows from the decisions made when you outline the direction for your content. We have a consistent meeting with a few directors. We have roughed out the next three years. The next year is planned in more firm detail. We work about three-to-four months out on a firm outline.

Scope & Sequence Creative Board

Brainstorming with Writers

Three months in advance we meet with the writers of the material and brainstorm the creative direction for both large group material and small group material. We ask the writers to come to this meeting with ideas. This meeting is where we give our writers specific direction.

November Creative Ideas

First Read-Through

Two months before it is due, a small team reads through everything. We read it aloud from the opening activity to large group and small group. Hearing it helps us make sure that all of the pieces connect and flow well together, as well as allowing us to tweak wording. At this phase, if there is a major re-write, it goes back to the writer. If there is a minor re-write, we do it.

Second Read-Through

A few days after the first read-through, each section goes to the specific team that works with it. The large group directors get all of the large group scripts. These teams read, make small changes, and begin to talk through the logistics of this month to see, for example, if a large prop is needed or if we need to create a video piece. Small group teams read to make sure instructions are clear and decide what supplies need to be ordered.

Final Edits

Finally a team edits the material checking for clear directions, good sentence structure, and grammatical errors. They are also making sure that we didn’t omit anything and that it is simple and easy for our volunteers to use.

Do you write your own curriculum?

The Never Ending Story of God

kids — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:00:11 +0000

This past week we launched the beginning of a new curriculum series for this year. Yes, we are still teaching a big idea each month, and yes, we will still have a bottom line each week.

But this year we are going to spend 10 months tying the big themes of the Bible together in order to help our kids see the BIGGER story of God. We’ll write more about The Never Ending Story of God later.

We started at the very beginning of the story with Creation and Adam and Eve. Our Big Idea for the month is Obedience.

Obedience - Doing what you are asked to do by those who are over you.

As we tell the Bible stories this month, we will be introducing the beginning of The Never Ending Story of God. Themes like: God created the world. God created and loved people. By our disobedience, sin entered into the world.

Think of this video like a “title package” that leads right into the live Bible story telling.

Click here to view the embedded video.

How are you launching the new school year with your kids?

DON’T be that LEADER!

kendra — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:00:53 +0000

As we were preparing our small group leaders to start the new school year, there were a few things that we wanted them to remember. Our hosts are opening with a “Don’t Be That Kid” video segment in large group, so we thought it would be fun to play off of this idea.

We emailed the following video to our small group leaders last week.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What is a fun way you’ve communicated those important “need to knows?”

Game Day - August 15, 2010

kendra — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:37:39 +0000

Today was a great day! Lots and lots of kids…lots and lots of parents…lots and lots of volunteers. God brought a lot of people through our doors. From the youngest baby to the oldest adult, we pray they left with an impression of God’s love and greatness.

I was a little camera happy, SO here’s what it looked like!

Early in the morning…

The calm before the storm…

The windows were welcoming!

The balloons were definitely welcoming!

The Birthday Cart made its debut.

As did the Birthday Bear in Waumba Land!

The staff passed out clipboards loaded with important stuff.

They made some final tweaks.

And then the check-in began.

Every child to a new room - a new small group!

The hallways were buzzing!

Bible Storytellers were excited and ready to deliver an important message. Boy, did they!

Bottom Line: God’s way is always the best way.

Classrooms were packed.

Small Group Leaders were getting to know their kids for the first time.

Even in Waumba Land, Small Group Leaders held their kids in the palm of their hands.

I loved seeing this high school student listening intently to all that this little boy had to say.

Babies crying on our hall is a very rare occurence. Only one cried today.

Well, maybe one more, but Jenn worked her magic and put a stop to that.

Well maybe just a few more in this little crying train. But they got happy real quick. Promise!

This room was just buzzing with happiness. I wanted to stay.

This little darling? He wanted me to rescue him. I really wanted to take him home, but his mama said no.

Doesn’t it just do your heart good to see these happy students serving? They make me smile every time!

Our staff and volunteers were happy to be there. It showed.

Then the service let out. I asked the parents to be still because they were blurring my picture.

They didn’t care.

Again parents, move a little slower!

And then it was time for everyone to go to KidStuf!

Based on the size of the crowd, I think they were all there!

We introduced the Big Idea of Obedience.

You know…Doing what you’re asked to do by those who are over you.

The serpent sang a song to Eve. This was my favorite line…

“How about you Evie poo…why would I lie to you?”

It was great!

Houselights were up as kids and parents talked about why it’s important to obey.

What a great moment to witness hundreds of parents talking to their kids about obedience.

KidStuf Take-Out = Rotten Apples Game

Our Waumba Landers learned that God loves them.

I hope all of our preschoolers learn this and know this and believe it for the rest of their lives.

Our staff was a little tired by the end of the day.

They’ve all worked so hard to be ready.

Promotion was seamless on every campus.

Grateful for each and every one of them.

Then we took our tired feet home.

The end.

What happened with you this weekend?

So Here’s What Happened!

kendra — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 19:33:33 +0000

Last week was a crazy week. It was the last week to get all of the details of promotion finalized. It was a week of massive communication to everyone. It was a week of deadlines.

We were ending our summer programming with bang. We are finishing projects so that we can launch the fall in style.

And yes, our team is very organized. And no, everything did not go as planned. Our computer database did not cooperate. Our small size t-shirts are stuck out of the country somewhere. A “must have” video shoot location canceled at the last minute.

So here’s what happened:

The Video Shoot: We needed two very specific locations for a video shoot and after knocking on the doors of a few total strangers, we found them! One was a 101-year-old farm house and the other was the biggest disaster of a garage you have ever seen. It was perfect!

The Database: We recently migrated our entire ministry to a new database. Needless to say, not all of the kinks are worked out. We are promised that it will soon be a new sleek and sweetly purring upgrade.

But for now, Wayne and Jason are saving the day! I’ll tell you more about them in a later post.

The Coaches Meeting: Every director met with all of their coaches this week. Most of them hosted them in their homes or at a restaurant. It was great to reconnect at the end of a busy summer and to give them all kinds of fun information to start the new year.

The Promotion: Moving about 8,000 kids and 2,500 volunteers to their new small groups for the fall is no easy task. All small group rosters had to be complete by Sunday so that we could give them out to all of our small group leaders. This process is more time consuming than I can even explain… so I won’t!

The Brainstorm: We spent a day with a team of writers working through creative ideas for our November content. Writers come to this meeting with ideas and we all work together to shape those ideas into a solid direction. Our big idea is “Gratitude - a thankful attitude,” and we are teaching through the life of Moses. It’s gonna be fun!

The Kindergarten Konfidential: We hosted Kindergarten Konfidential this past Sunday. Getting our Kindergartners and their parents ready to move up from Waumba Land to UpStreet, is a big deal. This event is all about communication (and fun!) This “parent secrets” video was part of the program.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Grab & Go: Massive coordination went into putting together a bag for every volunteer to stop into their classroom and pick up last Sunday. Included in every bag: their t-shirt, bio page introducing them to their team, magnet with coaches contact info, volunteer roster with team contact information, curriculum, and “need to knows” for Promotion Sunday.

The Shirt: Yes we roll t-shirts…by the hundreds! Although our highly organized and fearless leader works so hard to get our shirts delivered to us early, we always run into an obstacle that is out of our control. This year all of our small size t-shirts are stuck out of the country. Hopefully they will be here by Friday!

This simple list doesn’t begin to describe the massive effort involved. All of the “heavy lifting” involved in each of these projects was done by our incredible staff. I wish you could meet them.

This Sunday is promotion. We are excited and we are ready!

So what happened with you this week?

Starting From Scratch - Part 3

kids — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 11:00:21 +0000

If we were starting from scratch we would focus on three primary areas: leaders, the environment, and creating simple systems. You can read more about leaders and environments in part 1 and part 2.

Today, let’s talk systems! Some of you love them. Some of you hate them. You (we) all need them. Systems allow you to deliver a predictable and high quality service every time. They are necessary!

As time goes on you are going to need more systems, but for now, let’s keep it simple.

The Basics:

Check In. How will you check kids into your space and capture their information?

Morning Schedule. What can your leaders and kids expect the day to look like? How will you ensure that you have enough time to accomplish all that you want to accomplish?

Communication. How will volunteers get their materials? How will parents know if there is an event? How will you get information out to your audience?

Emergency. What happens if you have to evacuate the building? What if a child is lost? What if there’s blood?!

Pick-up and Security. How will you ensure that only the right person picks up the right child? Will parents have to wait in a long line? What if they lose their security tag?

When thinking about systems you need to work hard to keep it simple. Your volunteers are not staying up late each night memorizing all of the steps! So the systems need to be intuitive. They need to make sense!

A great way to create systems is to think through and define the end result. Then, start at the beginning points for the people involved and take the logical next step. Once you have that all written down, then go back over your steps and simplify!

If you are not a systematic person, get someone in the mix who is! Problem-solving people are also great when discussing systems.

What systems did you think were important when starting from scratch?

Starting From Scratch - Part 2

kids — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 14:52:00 +0000

A few of us have been involved in the process of starting a ministry from scratch, but we work with an incredible team of strategic partners who are doing it! Right now. Everyday!

When you are starting from scratch there are a few things you really need to focus on. First of all, you’ve got to focus on finding the best leaders that you can find. You can read more about that in part 1.

The first impression you make on the new families you are trying to reach is important! When you’re starting from scratch, you’ve got to focus on the environment.

Here are a few things to consider when creating an environment from scratch:

The Look and Feel

• It has to be clean and safe. It is worth it to pay for a great piece of carpet to roll out on the floor in your preschool environment. Parents won’t put their child on a floor that they know was open to the public as a movie theater the night before.

• Appeal to the kids. Choose colors, signs, pillows, toys, posters, games, and furniture with the kids in mind.

• Draw them in. Pay special attention to the check-in area. The entrance is the first thing that the kids see. You want your kids to be tugging mom and dad down the hallway in order to get there faster!

Sound and Smell

• Music! No matter if you have a big hallway sound system or you have a boom box staged in the corner, music creates a vibe. Take some time and create a few playlists that will appeal to the kids.

• Air fresheners! A bad smell makes me think dirty. No smell at all makes me think…nothing! But a good smell? It appeals to me. It makes me think clean. It’s easy.

Function

• Chaos! When a space doesn’t function then it gives the impression of chaos. In some instances it can give the impression that it isn’t safe. Think about the ages of kids that you are putting together and how you can divide the space and use it to it’s maximum.

• Small groups and large groups. We have always had small groups that meet in a large group space. If we were starting from scratch we would definitely plan from the beginning to get the most from our space by using it for both large group and small group.

• Preschoolers need space. They need to run, play games, roll a ball, climb, crawl, swing, cook in their kitchens, have a snack, and get their diapers changed.

FUN!

• The Candy Man! It’s easy. Give a friendly guy a bucket of candy and ask him to pass it out to the kids. This is fun!

• Lights. There are so many strobe lights and other moving lights that can be plugged right into your outlet. You might even consider changing out your regular light bulbs for colored light bulbs. Patio string lights are cheap!

• Dance Music. You will be amazed at how kids will spontaneously bust a move when they hear music they know. And when all of the leaders break into the cha cha slide for no good reason? Now that’s fun!

Several years ago I visited one of our partners who was setting up their Sunday services in a temporary rented space. It was a local concert venue, complete with a bar. It was a Saturday night party spot in the middle of town. It was production ready, great location, and great modern décor.

But oh the transformation that would occur from close of business Saturday night to start of services Sunday morning. It was amazing to see!

They were able to transform a dirty, smelly party spot into a clean, inviting, functional and fun environment for kids. It was impressive to see.

Environment matters. In many ways it will matter the most because your new families are making a first-time judgment based on what they see and experience. It doesn’t have to be flashy. It doesn’t have to be expensive.

What ideas have you used when creating your environment from scratch?

Starting From Scratch

kids — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 20:25:58 +0000

This week we have been brainstorming the content for a new website for our Strategic Partners. We want to offer helpful content. We don’t want to waste time giving them stuff that they don’t need.

During these meetings, we really tried to put ourselves in their shoes. You know those “I don’t have a building”, “money is tight”, “we’re starting from scratch,” kinda shoes.

The truth is that several of us have been in those shoes at one time or another. We know that those are exciting, exhausting, and rewarding days.

If we were starting from scratch tomorrow, here is the first thing we would focus on:

1. Leaders

You and I both know that when an amazing team surrounds you, you can accomplish more than you imagined. Obstacles don’t seem quite as overwhelming. Heavy workloads seem more doable.

Finding leaders is a discipline that takes time. We have found that whenever we are starting anything new we always start by finding the key leaders that will be a part of the team.

I wish I could give you a magical method for finding these leaders. But, our best leaders are found one by one. We meet them for lunch. We hang out. We have fun. We talk. We shop. We work on something together with them. We invest in a relationship.

Practical Tip: Decide on your leadership needs and place a 3×5 card on a large foam board with each position, job title and your name. The truth is that until you find that person…it’s you! Every time you find and place a new leader, replace the old card with their name.

This will motivate you to find new leaders…one at a time. This will also help you visually see progress. Before you know it, you will have a team!

There are two other major areas that we focus on when starting from scratch. We’ll talk about those in part 2.

Many of you are in the thick of it right now! You are building a new ministry from the ground up. We would love to learn from your experience, so share the knowledge!

What do you focus on when you are starting from scratch?

What happened to music in KidStuf Live?

kids — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 17:55:01 +0000

One of the biggest changes we made to KidStuf Live this season was to drop the singing element from the show and people have been asking us why, so we thought we’d blog to explain.

First a few caveats. This was a slow evolution over a couple of seasons and it didn’t happen lightly. We, by no means tell other churches that they should do the same; this was truly based on our circumstances. And, we did not drop music from the show. If anything, we are more musical, but we no longer have a designated section in the show for family singing/worship.

Here’s why we made the change:

1. The Sunday Schedule. We realized that before families came to KidStuf, kids worshiped in UpStreet for 20-minutes and parents worshiped in their adult service for 20-minutes and so neither group had a real need/desire to come into our show and sing some more.

2. Low Participation. Maybe this is different at your church, but we weren’t getting high participation in the singing segments…especially from parents. Most of the time they were checking their Blackberries or talking in the hallway instead of coming in for music and that was a deal-breaker for us. If we aren’t engaging parents right away, it’s hard to win them back.

Some of it was seating. We dropped music before we had fully committed to “Family-Style” seating and we have noticed that parent participation is so much higher when they are sitting with their kids. So it might work better now, but we still won’t do it based on reason number 3.

3. The Once-A-Month Production. When we cut our show down from weekly to monthly and made it only 35/40 minutes, we didn’t have time for anything extraneous. In the course of one show we wanted a family to grasp the big idea, the Bible basis for the month, and most importantly, that they would know how and be inspired to use our Take-Out (application tool) when they went home. And we had to wrap all three things in a clubhouse story too! Not an easy task. So, we really didn’t have time to do something that 1, wasn’t working and 2, wasn’t driving people towards our content.

So that’s the long and the short of it. We are not against music in KidStuf Live, we actually are thinking about bringing back a new version of it for our latest invention, “The KidStuf Encore.” But we can’t talk about that yet. ☺

And actually, if you want to follow all our hints for the new season of KidStuf – befriend t he “KidStuf Staff” on Facebook or follow us on Twitter!

What Do You Do When the Pressure Is On?

kids — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 17:11:59 +0000

This past month has been a doozie! We’ve been recruiting new volunteers like crazy, leading orientations, training, screening, apprenticing…you know what I’m talking about.

There have been several end of the school year events like BabyD and Family Birthday Celebration. And, we have been getting ready for summer programming changes. For us, this means a new set, video elements, theme designs, and t-shirts.

It gets a little crazy!

People get stressed!

There are a few specific qualities that I see our team put into practice again and again when the workload is heavy and the deadlines are tight. Here’s what it takes to make it through when the pressure is on.

Make a plan. Set aside time and make a list of everything that needs to be done. Decide the best people and the best way to get it done. Define the limiting factors (budget, timeline, availability of people).

Buckle down. Hard work is the name of the game. There are times for rest and times for taking long lunch breaks. Now is not the time! Prepare your team for this period of time and help them realize that everyone needs to give more.

Remove distractions. As the leader, you can help your team focus. Remove things that cause your team to come off of the job at hand. This could be regular meetings that need to come off of the calendar for a week. This could be routine tasks that can be postponed.

Keep it fun. Fun fuels hard work. Yes, you all might be in a room for the next six hours sorting and rolling t-shirts. But make a game out of it. Start a competition. Talk smack! Play music. Whatever it takes to keep it light.

Keep it short-term. Nobody can or should work at this high-pressured pace all of the time. Be sure that as the leader you know and communicate the end. Your team is willing to give 110% when they see the light at the end of the tunnel.

We all know that there are times that require “all hands on deck” to get the job done. As the leader, it’s your job to model how to do this in a healthy way. Jump in. Work right alongside your team. Pay attention to the morale of your team. Encourage and praise their hard work!

When you’ve reached the goal take a deep breath, return to a healthy pace, and celebrate your team for a job well done!