loving the new curriculum!

We’ve been using our new First Look and 252Basics curriculum for about a month now and I can say that I love it! It is great to use – I love the digital format for it. I am able to open the files and modify the material to fit the format of how we’re using it. They both give plenty of variety and activities that we’re having enough material for both small group hour and large group time with another smaller group break out for 252basics. I have gotten good feedback from my volunteers on how First Look repeats the same simple point each week. The kids are remembering it! That’s the best! You can tell they are truly learning what we’re teaching. With 252Basics, we switched from KIDMO and the kids are responding well to “live” teaching vs. DVD-based.

If you have any suggestions on getting the kids to use their God Time books and Refrigerator Notes, I’d appreciate it! I am looking forward to going to Orange Conference to talk to others who use it and to learn more. I am loving the model of Family Ministry and know that the “church” needs to move more in that direction. I’ll post more about that later!

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New curriculum is here!

Our new curriculum for 252 Basics and First Look is here. (Well, it is downloadable!) I spent a few hours tonight meeting with my preschool directors and determining our new preschool program for the Fall. It will involve new curriculum, new flow and schedule, and a new rotation of teachers. Not to mention new age breakdown to our classes.

I love the First Look curriculum by North Point. (ReThink Group) Here’s what I love so far:

• It’s downloadable and you can edit it to fit your needs!
• The scope of what it covers — it’s application of Bible stories.
• The hands-on, age appropriateness of the material.
• The ease of aquiring the materials it asks for – nothing too hard or expensive to get
• It gives a lot of activities – enough for 2 1/2 hours for us.

I think we are going to be really happy with it. We’ve taken it and structured it to fit into our format of Sunday mornings and I think it will work beautifully. I can’t wait to see what the kids learn from it!

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Fall changes…

I have decided today that rather than going with the Elevate curriculum from Fellowship Church, we are going to go with 252Basics by ReThink Group (North Point Church). So our Fall line up will be First Look for Preschool and 252 Basics for Elementary. We will be taking the content, using a portion of it — the small group portion during our church’s Sunday School hour. It won’t be like traditional Sunday School for the kids, more like small group time. The kids will come together and hangout for 10-15 minutes then we’ll meet in small groups. They’ll be introduced to the Bible Story and concept for the day, do activities together, and then dig deeper with the truths. During our church hour, the kids will meet in whole group for crowd breakers, games, presentation of Bible Story, Worship, offering, and prayer. We may do a family production program 2-4 times a year.

I am really excited about this decision. I struggled with moving from KIDMO to Elevate. But Elevate just didn’t feel right for me. Very production driven, and we’re not quite there yet. I also felt that their activities were paper/pen oriented and I prefer hands-on actvities like 252 Basics offers. This Fall should be BIG for us!

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reviewing Elevate

Oohh!! I got the new Elevate curriculum today from Fellowship Church. I wanted to review over it before deciding to use it or not so a church in our area offered me to look at it. I am really excited about possibly using it, but I have some questions about how it will fit into our format. Our time frame is one issue. I really think by leaving KIDMO and switching to Elevate we’re bringing quality up more in our children’s programming. We’ll be incorporating small groups on Sunday mornings, maintain our current worship, and live-person teaching, not DVD based. It’ll integrate dramas as well as set-design for each unit.

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Sunday School vs. Small Groups

I heard it said once that you cannot be a Sunday School church and a small group church. Is this true? Why or why not? I feel that having both does bring it’s pros and cons. Stretching of resources, volunteer commitment, they seem to be similar in application although Sunday School is more academic based. Is Sunday School out-dated? These thoughts are all ones I am struggling with as we’re trying to evaluate effectiveness in our ministry.  

For years I wrote the curriculum I used for various programs with the kids. We also have used a variety of OTC curriculum – Group Publishing Hands-On Bible, Standard Publishing Heartshaper, Group Publishing Living Inside Out, College Press material, etc. Whew! Currently we’re using Heartshaper for Sunday School and KIDMO for Worship. We have been using Living Inside Out for Wednesday nights. In the Fall I am entertaining the thought of scrapping the Heartshaper and the KIDMO and switching to Elevate by Fellowship Church for both time slots. We would do the following:

9:00am – (Sunday School time) – Change up from a traditional Sunday School setting. Our families participation level is low across the board in church. I’d like to implement this time as more of a small group environment being it would be easier to get committed leaders. We’d probably start with fellowship, large group lesson introduction, small groups to look in depth at the material, as well as prepare for worship.

10:15 – (Worship time) – Would be spent in large group worship & lesson time.

My attendance would be lower I think for small groups, but although I want a good crowd of kids there, I also see the kids in small groups as being core kids. I like the model of small groups. I am conflicted about Sunday School. What do you think? Can a church effectively handle both?

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preschool curriculum part II

I am still on the fence about which one to use in the Fall. I am between First Look and Lil’K still.

First Look – I love the options offered in the materials. I could use them for both church hours and not run out of material. I am thinking the 1 and 2 year old material may be a little advanced and have pretty high expectations for that age. I like the range of what it covers — God made me, God loves me, Jesus wants to be my friend forever. I love that! I also like tha downloadable format. BTW – love their new website!

Lil’ K – The media for this is out of this world – engaging and done well. My biggest qualm with this material is just the fact of subjecting preschoolers to their main format of teaching on a television. I am a parent of a preschooler and a toddler and I know how I limit their tv watching – for elementary I think KIDMO – done partly on screen is great, with the the little ones I think it is almost unneeded. I am a huge proponent of learning through play. Lil’K does offer hands-on activities to go along with the video portion, I am just questioning whether the video portion is even needed. They also do not offer material for 1 and 2′s.

Ah. choices to make. We had a program in place for a year called Wiggle Worship. It was awesome – incorporated drama, music, puppets, and dance into the show. The kids loved it, talked about it, and looked forward to it. Unfortunately it was a program that was a volunteers vision and when they stepped down there was no one to fill that void. Unless it is done with excellence and passion then it isn’t worth doing here, so we’re re-evaluating. I know our preschool program is weak and I want awesome things for it. I am just praying that God raises up the right leaders for the job!

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Curriculum review: Living Inside Out

Since we have used various curriculum thoughout the years in combination with writing our own material – I thought I’d post reviews of some of the materials. The first one we’re currently using for our Wednesday night programming. If you’ve used the curriculum I’d love for you to post your thoughts to help others out there trying to make decisions.

 Curriculum Name: Living Inside Out

Company: Group Publishing

Genre: Sunday School material (we’re using for Wed. night program)

Format: Whole group/small group

Time length: 1 hour

It includes countdown videos, worship, various methods of presenting the main story, and a variety of activities to choose from for whole group time. The small group material provides an activity for age-divided groups, take home pages, and memory verse activities.

We use this material ith making modifications that work for our programming. I run all the presentation through Media Shout and toss in music videos at the beginning while kids are coming in. The theme song “Living Inside Out” is catchy and kids like it. Other songs depend. Some are typical Group VBS songs from their VBS materials. Some are older hymns sung by kids, and then some are original to the material. My interest in them varies.

They offer like 5 activities to focus on the point of the unit. Each unit is themed and runs for 4-5 weeks. The activities vary on amount of supplies and prep. One targets the main story through drama, video, or interactive telling. The other activities are games, object lessons, etc. The quality of the story presentation and activities is one of the strengths of Group publishing. They are relevantm hands-on, and do a good job of reinforcing the concept being taught.

The small group activities are easy to manage, pretty good quality, and work well with a 15-20 min. time frame. We do not use the memory work section because it requires materials purchased from Group and with the number of kids we have it is not cost effective to use. The kids branch out during small group time and spend it discussing their lives and troubles with their leaders.

The material is developed for preschool – 5th grade and honestly, I feel they do a good job of targeting 2nd & 3rd graders. It’s somewhat over the heads of the preschoolers and a bit redundant for older elem.

Overall, it’s been decent curriculum - the kids love it, they bring their friends, and are learning. The concepts and stories tend to be redundant. The quality of worship could be improved as well. The themes are fun and easy to theme out for.  

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