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2020-02-26 to 28 Pictures: Charleston, South Carolina

One of the few upsides of having to cancel our Spring Break trip last March at the onset of the pandemic is that we are "stuck" with a rather large voucher from one of those discount airlines. Last autumn, Tricia and I spent a weekend in Savannah, Georgia and had a...

A John 3:16 Craft for Kids

John 3:16 is one of the most well known and reassuring verses in the Bible. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.John 3:16 (NIV) The following is a little craft I threw...

2020-03-01 Pictures: Lyndsey’s College Signing Day

This afternoon Lyndsey made it official, signing her letter of intent to play college basketball for the Hiram College Terriers starting next year. While she made the decision and committed to Hiram before Christmas, she has been looking forward to this day since her...

2020-02-13 Pictures: Lyndsey’s 18th Birthday

I am little behind on posting photos. These are some of my favorites from a couple of weekends ago when we got a chance to celebrate Lyndsey's 18th birthday. It's hard to believe that my little girl is officially an adult. It was nice to have the family all back...

What is DOCTRINE?

Introduction I love working with kids, and I love teaching them hard concepts in ways they can understand. To that end, for years I have been working on a dictionary of theological terms for kids and teens. In sharing those definitions, there seemed no better place to...

If You Want It Done Right

In all likelihood, you know how the phrase ends: If you want it done right, DO IT YOURSELF! This is a bit of a mantra for me, and frankly, something that I struggle with daily both in leadership and in my Christian walk.  In theory, this is easy to accept. ...

What Does God Hate?

This is the little and humble post that started it all. I happened to be reading through my Bible, and this passage impacted me so much that I posted a little blurb about it on Facebook. That was July 28, 2008, and I've been writing and sharing ever since. (Maybe...

#30 – Break It Up (Tips For Large Group Teaching)

Welcome to a continuing series of tips on working with large groups of children. I hope that you will find these tips useful and be able to implement them in your dealings with large groups of kids. If you do, please leave a comment and let us know. For a complete list of posts in this series, please see the index page. So, without further introduction, here is today’s installment.

Kids do not naturally have long attention spans.  I was at a movie with a toddler over Christmas vacation, and this point was drive home for me in a very real way.  Even Alvin and the Chipmunks couldn’t keep that child engaged.  After about twenty minutes, she was all over that theater until her mother finally had to take her out into the lobby.  If you’ve ever been seated behind a four year old on a cross-country flight, then you’ve likely experience this truth with all five of your senses.

The culture we live in has exasperated this problem by catering to the short attention spans of kids through the entertainment and games it offers to kids.  These influences have had the collective effective of reducing attention spans even more (as an aside, this problem isn’t limited to kids).  One of my mantras when it comes to working with kids is that we must make sure not to underestimate them.  That said, it is still a good idea to break up your lesson into smaller components to keep the kids’ attention.  Put your musical worship segment right in the middle of the lesson to give kids a chance to get up on their feet and worship God.  Tell your story and then show a video to reinforce the point.  Use announcements to give the kids a short break from the teaching.  Have the kids come up and act out the story to get them moving around.  Play a little game in the middle of your lesson to reinforce the main point.  Whatever you can think of, break the lesson into clear and distinct segments so that the kids don’t feel like they are sitting through one long teaching.  Trust me, you’ll enjoy the lesson more that way too!

Return to the Tips for Large Group Teaching in Children’s Ministry index page.

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