Home Archive by category "Teaching" (Page 17)

Category: Teaching

The Great Adventure Cards Are BACK!

The Great Adventure Cards Are Back! I can not even begin to tell you how EXCITED I am to announce that the Great Adventure Cards ARE BACK on Kidology.org! Created by our own board member and children’s pastor Dan Huffman, these amazing Bible trading cards are a wonderful way to get kids to participate at church. They are more than just Bible cards, they are a complete FUN Bible trading game! There are 25 sets of 80 cards with a variety of series, each is a Bible story, and each is a different number of cards, depending on the story. The artwork is very cool. Each card has a question and a Bible reference. The questions were carefully written so that they are hard enough that most kids (and adults!) aren’t going to “just know the answer” but easy enough that by looking up the answer they can find it in that one verse. The kids collect the cards by coming to church, bringing their Bible, a friend, participating, answering questions, etc. and when they complete a series, AND can answer all the questions (from reading their Bibles and working on them with Mom and Dad at home!) they give…

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When Teaching a Large Age Range

I was reading a discussion over on the Kidology.org forums about how to teach to a wide age range and there were some comments suggesting different age ranges to aim for. Some were suggesting “aiming for the middle” or “targeting the older kids” so as not to bore them, whereas others thought it better to teach to the younger ones so as not to lose them. I’d like to suggest a different approach after having taught over 1,000 children’s church services to first through sixth graders for over fifteen years. It’s a rather simple suggestion: AIM FOR EVERYONE! The key in a large group with a large age range is to shift your focus constantly. The secret is to be highly visual and to be physically moving and animated to keep the younger ones tracking with you (don’t stand still and never sit, meaning you the teacher) and use humor constantly to keep a connection with your audience. Think about it: Senior pastors preach to a wide audience range of age and intelligence and education and world view and learning styles and they can do it! They don’t break their audience into groups! How do they do it? It isn’t…

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The Eyeball Game

I almost hate giving away this “ministry secret” but it is truly a powerful invisible tool for connecting with kids and making sure no matter what you are doing, you are connecting with each and every kid in your ministry… HERE’S THE SECRET: I make it a point to try and look every child in the eyes at some point during the service. I call it the “eyeball game” but it is only a game in my mind. No one but me even knows I am playing this game. As I am talking to the kids I am looking out over their faces and making eye to eye contact with each and every child. If a child isn’t looking at me, I will come back to them. If I need to walk out and among them to look into the eyes of every child – then I do that! If I need to gently put my hand on the shoulder of a child to get them to look up, then I do that. If I need to kneel down to see their eyes, I do that. No child is missed. I have no Bible verse to back this up, but…

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