Tag Archives: Curriculum

Unreached people groups kidmin curriculum

Posted on 01. Apr, 2011 by .

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Now that missions week is pretty much over, what about curriculum? “What if I want to teach some of this stuff to my kids? What if I’m still new to this unreached people’s stuff, who am I going to teach it?”

Great question! Actually, there is some pretty descent stuff out there. Let me point you to one resource called “Kids Around the World.”

About 6-7 years ago, I came across this curriculum and used it for a midweek breakout class and it was a big hit. Let me preface this though. I’d probably not use this curriculum on a Sunday morning. It’s good stuff, but not the high-energy content I’d prefer for a Sunday experience. Some of the music and such is already a little dated, but the content really is good. If you’re looking for content that helps kids actually see and get to know kids from unreached people groups, this will do it.

In addition to 12-14 minute videos, the included curriculum leads kids in activities and games relevant to the culture being studied as well as guiding kids in how to pray for each people group. Each lesson packet costs $20. Although every lesson comes with one video, you could possibly get 2 weeks out of each lesson if you’re looking to stretch the material. You can save a little money by getting the entire set for about $120 and it includes 12 lessons… perfect for a quarter of curriculum.

Click here to get the entire curriculum set.

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Legal usage of kidmin resources

Posted on 13. Jan, 2011 by .

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Earlier this week I reviewed a new Easter Resource by God’s Kids Worship (in case you forgot, I’m giving one away this week too… check here for details) and it prompted a very interesting thought. As a part of the the resource God’s Kids Worship gives you in most of their products, they provide you with a license to burn up to 30 music CD’s to give out to people for rehearsal purposes. I think think that this is great. It provides great value for this resource, but on the other side, it makes the end user very clear what they are and are not allowed to do.

I’ve found that many of us in ministry and kidmin are not usually aware of what the license on most products grant us permission to do and in many cases, a lot of kidmin leaders are technically breaking the law in the ways they use their resources. This happens in many avenues.

Curriculum: Most curriculum have very specific licenses that go along with the physical product you buy. Many licenses state that you cannot make copies of books, pages or other resources, but in order to use them, you have to buy additional books or guides. Many curriculums technically restrict you from saving them and just using it again next year… the license technically grants the user to utilize the curriculum at a specific time. I’ve also seen the license on curriculums that restrict you from selling or loaning curriculum.

Music: It’s the same for music. We often purchase music either apart for a curriculum or with it and rip it or get it into digital form and simply burn multiple CDs or put on a network to be used by multiple computers. Although some songs may allow this kind of use, others do not. Do to otherwise it a violation of copyright.

Videos: Many of us use video curriculum today and many publishers are providing video to load directly onto the presentation computers. However, just because you bough the DVD doesn’t necessarily mean the license grants you permission to play on every campus at the same time.

I’ll be honest, the copyright and license stuff is very frustrating and I think that it takes two to dance. In our ministries, we should probably pay close attention to what is the legal use of the curriculum, music and videos that we buy and stick to it. However, I also think it’s the responsibility for publishers and creators of content to be very clear of what the end user can or cannot do. Several years ago I was buying video based curriculum and we were going to use it at more than one campus. I asked and they sold me extra DVD’s for a few bucks. They had a plan, I just had to ask. I think I would have been frustrated if I’d had to pay the same price for every resource.

So, I think it’s important for us as the end user to not make assumptions about what we can or can’t do. I’ve seen some take the attitude of saying “that’s ridiculous… they’re charging way too much… so I’m just going to make copies.” If you feel that something is overpriced, then don’t purchase it. However, I think that it’s really important for the producers of this content to be very clear on what we can and cannot do with their content and maybe even give us more options as it makes the customer really happy and a loyal customer for a long time.

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Question for the CMO tribe

Posted on 20. Dec, 2010 by .

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Late last week I got an email from Skip Coulter. He said he had a question for the CMO tribe. I liked that. I know there’s a decent little crowd of regular readers and the “CMO tribe” has really helped me out in the past when I’ve had questions on illustrations, ideas or other things I was working on. So, here’s Skip’s question:

I really believe that the integrity of a children’s program is in the quality of its material.What recommendations (brand name) would you make as excellent sources of material for pre-school and grade school materials?  I’m a lay worker in a small church in Alabama, but we have a wonderful children’s minister and kids that we just enjoy and want to invest their lives glorifying God.  Can you give me some advice?

So, could some of you pipe in and give Skip your thoughts. I’ll wait until later to give my thoughts.

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Free Curriculum

Posted on 21. Oct, 2010 by .

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Free curriculum! Did that get your attention. I heard about this a while back and thought to myself, “what a great idea!” We’ve been using 252 Basics and My First Look for over two years at Gateway and it’s been a great experience.

Curriculum can be expensive, so this free trial comes as a huge gift. Obviously, Orange would love for you to use their curriculum. They believe it will help your church in your strategy to reach the whole family, something few curriculums do. Over and over again you’ll hear Reggie Joiner say, “It’s not a curriculum, it’s a strategy.” However, even if you end up not sticking with Orange, isn’t it at least worth a shot? At the very least you’ll save money for three months as you won’t have the curriculum expense that quarter.

This offer applies to My First Look, 252 Basics and XP3 curriculum. Even if you’re already a subscriber, they have other gifts to give away. Jump over and check out Orange, it could be the best thing you can do for the ministry you lead.

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Where Does a Parent Learn to Be a Parent?

Posted on 08. Jun, 2010 by .

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Here’s some news on the family ministry front. Here’s a press release from Group Publishing concerning a new product that ties into their Faith Weaver line of curriculum.

New Curriculum Helps Parents Develop a Spiritual Foundation for Their Kids

Loveland, CO—For years, parents have been encouraged to take an active role in their child’s spiritual development, but oftentimes the primary responsibility falls on the shoulders of the church. In many cases, it’s because parents don’t know where to turn.

“Although many parents desire that their children develop spiritually, my experience shows that about 60 percent of parents aren’t doing anything at home to help build their children’s spiritual lives,” says Christine Yount Jones, executive editor of Children’s Ministry magazine. “I think this is because parents often lack confidence and don’t have a place to go to learn.”

As churches are looking for ways to equip parents to apply spiritual teaching in their everyday parenting, Group Publishing in Loveland, CO, has developed special small group curriculum for parents to meet that need. The curriculum is designed specifically to give parents the tools they need to guide and encourage their children’s spiritual growth.

The new small group curriculum, which launches this fall in churches around the country, is part of Group’s FaithWeaver® line of resources, which includes classes for all ages and has been successfully used in more than 25,000 churches nationwide since 1999. While parents are attending their small group, their children attend classes designed for them. Each week, everyone studies and discusses the same Bible point at an age-appropriate level.

“For example,” says Yount Jones, “one week the children might learn how they can rely on God. At the same time, the parents are taught how to help their children rely on God. Parents learn how to do this in practical ways and share ideas with other parents in their group. Now they can go home and weave faith teaching into their children’s lives throughout the week, focusing on this particular area.”

Other Bible points that the fall small group curriculum will cover include selflessness versus selfishness, showing true kindness, seeking wisdom during parenting challenges, and faithfulness. Group plans to introduce a new set of Bible points each quarter. Each meeting includes a lesson from the Bible on the point being presented, as well as extensive discussion and application time.

Parents interested in joining a small group can ask their local church for additional information or visit faithweaver.com. Churches interested in ordering the materials for a small group can visit faithweaver.com or check out their local Christian bookstore. Materials will be available in June.

About the Product

FaithWeaver Parent Small Group

Quarterly Parent Leader Guide: $9.99; ISBN: 9780764447471
Quarterly Parent Handbook: $5.29; ISBN: 9780764447488

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Dear kidmin curriculum publishers: Conclusion

Posted on 23. Feb, 2010 by .

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Okay, I never intended this series to jump into a third week. Sorry, my week last week got a little busy.

I just thought I’d wrap it up with a few closing thoughts.

Here’s what we explored:

There were some great conversations on some of these posts. If you missed any, be sure to check them out.

There seemed to be a lot of agreement from other Children’s Pastors in response to these posts. I expected as much since I wrote these based on personal frustrations as well as hearing first hand what others have been frustrated about. However, the point of this series wasn’t to complain to publishers. We have a symbiotic relationship with publishers and if we don’t tell them what we want, they won’t produce what we want. I know of at least three publishers who were reading this series, so hopefully the conversations happening around these topics have given them things to consider.

Most importantly of all, communicate with your publisher. Tell them what you like and what you don’t like, it’s the only way your publishers will have the feedback necessary to build your dream curriculum.

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Dear kidmin curriculum publishers: Independent standards

Posted on 18. Feb, 2010 by .

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Screen shot 2010-02-18 at 5.11.49 PMThis is actually something I’ve been thinking about for a very long time. I know other people have mentioned this kind of stuff before as well, especially anyone who has ever come from the field of education. I think actually pulling something like this off might be next to impossible, but greater things have happened. If I’m totally off, just ignore me then.

I have a very personal opinion that most children’s pastors who write their own curriculum should not be writing their own curriculum. I know that we’re very opinionated and we feel that we know what’s best for our kids, but just becasue we feel we’re good educators and teachers does not mean we know anything about curriculum paths, development progression and pushing out a comprehensive scope and sequence. For the most part, we should leave that to the curriculum publishers as many of them understand that better than us (not all of them though and that’s worth considering too).

Here’s the great thing you get from a publisher. They map out a multi-year scope and sequence that spans from birth through 5th grade (and often beyond). If a church sticks with that curriculum, that child will have a thorough experience. Most curriculum companies understand the process of teaching with the end in mind and they design their curriculum that way. They include various elements at different places so that kids progress through the material in an ordered and comprehensive way. Scope and sequence is good. It’s something we need.

However, here is the problem. Children’s Pastors don’t stick with any one curriculum for 10-15 years. At least none that I know. One publisher might have a great new product that addresses specific types of kids in a very relevant way, so we switch to that. Then another publisher comes out with something innovative that’s easier, so we switch to that. This isn’t bad, we want what’s best for our kids and it’s good when publishers create new and innovative products. However, every curriculum company has their own scope and sequence. When we jump around, ultimately our kids pay the price. Their curriculum experience is scattered and possibly incomplete.

Let me first preface. I personally believe that life change for our kids primarily takes place because of relationship. That’s the most important thing. However, curriculum does play and important part in directing the content of things discussed in that relationship. Therefore, curriculum is important.

My crazy thought would be that curriculum publishers could somehow work together and follow a predetermined set of standards. Certainly every publisher could agree on what a well rounded Christ-follower would look like and what concepts would need to be taught to point them in that direction. Curriculum companies already do this, but they just do it in their own way and and in their own time. I’m not talking about a total re-write of curriculum where every church is teaching the same thing ever Sunday, but what if there was an agreement that certain key concepts were taught to 4 and 5 year old children across the board. The same with 4th and 5th graders. Maybe it’s just 5-6 concepts that show up in the curriculum that cover these important foundations. That way as kids move and find themselves in a new church or when churches switch curriculum they don’t start all over. They merely pick up right where they left off.

Independent standards allow children to have consistent educational experiences regardless of what school they attend (usually). Independent standards allow consumers to know that they’ll be safe in their car regardless of which make and model they purchased. Independent standards allow patients to rest assured that the care they receive will be comparable regardless of what hospital they visit. Doesn’t this make sense? Doesn’t it seem like it would serve children and families if there was more collaboration (or at least predetermined standards) for the curriculum publishers?

Again, I know this one’s a crazy thought, but it’s been something I’ve wrestled around with for years. Tell me what you think? How am I wrong about this? How is this an impossible endeavor?

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Dear kidmin curriculum publishers: Video access

Posted on 16. Feb, 2010 by .

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Screen shot 2010-02-16 at 1.55.31 AMThis topic is closely related to my post last week about video curriculum, but from a different angle. More and more churches are relying on video driven or video rich content for their curriculum. Sometimes the video supplements the lesson and at other times the video is the lesson. In either of these cases, using video curriculum has been difficult to equip our volunteers for the service they are leading. I’m not sure if curriculum publishers have thought this through at all. So I get a DVD (or video file for those publishers that are pushing the limits) that I’m going to use at my weekend experiences. However, I have 3-6 lead teachers that have to interact with the video. Or I have 50 small group leaders that really should see the video beforehand so they know how to lead their group best after seeing it.

When I get this video, how do I prepare my leaders?

  • I can tell you what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to order 3-6 discs for my lead teacher, nor am I going to order 50 for my small group leaders. That would be financially irresponsible.
  • I’m not going to host a training every week (or once a month) just so everyone can see the videos. That would be a waste of everyone’s time.

So here’s what my options are:

  • I can just let my leaders not really know what the video is about and have them wing it as best as they can.
  • I can make copies of the DVDs and give one to each of my leaders.
  • I can rip the video of the DVDs, put them on youtube or vimeo and share the link with all my leaders.

One of those options doesn’t adequately prepare my leaders. Two of those options are technically illegal. However, I know many children’s pastors who do the last two. Why? Because they want to equip their leaders and they don’t see any other way. They don’t want to break the law… they just want the ability to get their teams ready.

Can’t there be a way  or a place where leaders and teachers can view the video on a website that we can direct them to? Maybe the video is kinda crappy, so you don’t have to be worried about someone stealing it.

The same it true with resourcing our parents. In order to equip our parents to lead at home, we’d like to let our parents see the same video their kids saw on Sunday. It can provide a great frame of reference for discussion around the dinner table. However, I can’t in good conscience broadcast videos I’ve ripped and uploaded to youtube. But, I don’t really have any other options. Can’t there be a way to give my parents access to these videos where there isn’t a concern about content being stolen?

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Dear kidmin curriculum publishers: Family content

Posted on 15. Feb, 2010 by .

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Screen shot 2010-02-14 at 11.54.41 PMIt seems like everyone is talking about family ministry. No really, it’s for real this time. About 6-8 years ago children’s pastors began adding “and family” to their job title, but it’s been more recently than that since there’s been a ton of energy dedicated to this idea of engaging with parents, especially in the world of curriculum. I think that right now, the knowledgeable children’s pastor who’s shopping or curriculum is looking closely at what is being offered to parents as a component of the curriculum.

I really don’t think it’s enough to simply “add on” family stuff as if it were an after thought, but it needs to be highly developed and compelling. It could be the deciding factor for many children’s pastors making their selection. Some publishing companies have started developing some strong content for families, but there’s certainly room for more. Here are a few things to consider.

  • Take home materials are dead. Most children’s pastors are trying to find creative ways to get parents to engage with take home papers, but most never make it to the home. If take home papers is a part of your family strategy, I’d seriously consider revising the strategy.
  • Synchronize your family content with the kid’s content. I recently came across so family ministry curriculum that I was every excited about. It looked so good, I even considered what it would look like to switch curriculum. Then I realized that the family curriculum didn’t line up with the kids curriculum. No thanks. If I’m going to invest in this, I’m going to hit families with the same message from multiple.
  • Make it affordable. I know, I’ll probably take some flack on this one. However, I feel that price is huge. As a church, I’ll supplement some of the cost, but if my parents aren’t leading their kids spiritually, it’s unlikely that they’ll elect to pay $15 a month for a resource to help them do something they weren’t already doing.

Anyone else have any ideas you’d like to see concerning family ministry content?

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Ministry resources: risk versus safety

Posted on 15. Feb, 2010 by .

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RiskI’m near the end of this series on curriculum series and I think one of the themes emerging more than anything is the idea that ministry leaders are pushing for advancement and change. However, one person commented that the majority of ministry leaders buying from the curriculum publishers are currently happy with the the way things are. Since this majority of ministry leaders make up the bulk of revenue for the publisher, they have little motivation to want to change things up.

That reminds me of when I was at a previous church and we were locked into a a check-in software that was absolute junk. When moving to this software, we were told that it would do everything we needed, including being a great solution for multi-site check-in. For the 18 months we used this software, it caused me nothing but headaches. Hours and hours of my life were sucked into the vortex of this software never to be salvaged. I went around and around with customer support offering suggestion after suggestion. Most of what I said fell on deaf ears.

The problem? This software company had very little of the mainstream and mega church market. The small to medium sized traditional church was their bread and butter. The big churches really didn’t pay much more for their services, so this company had little motivation to meet our needs. If it hadn’t been for the tens of thousands of bucks we’d sunk in to go with this company, we would have ditched them right away. Wow, I wish I hadn’t brought all of that up.

So here’s the main point. Many of us are being considered the noisy 5%. We want more, but publishers are reluctant to give us what we want due to financial risks if what we want doesn’t become profitable. It’s an understandable quandary. However, there’s got to be some middle ground somewhere, right? Meeting the needs of this noisy 5%, doesn’t meet starting a new line of curriculum from scratch, does it? Isn’t there room to modify, expand or tweak something that already exists? To some degree I’d think I’d say that there’s plenty of great material out there already, it’s just getting it in a form that more fitting for the noisy 5% is what’s needed.

Thoughts?

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