Tag Archives: Early Childhood
What’s your Biting Policy
Posted on 23. Jan, 2011 by Kenny.
So, you’ve got biters. What’s your policy? Do you even have one or do you wing it on a case by case basis? Do your volunteers and leaders know it?On of my Children’s Pastors sent me this great article from Childrensministry.com on biting. After reading this, we decided to update our biting policy to make it more clear and systematic.
We have a biting policy, but when put to the test this past summer, we found that we were all over the place. We had a chronic biter. This kid would bite anything that moved and he was a repeat offender. When first confronted with this situation, my first response to the Early Childhood director was, “what does our policy manual say?” We quickly came to realize that our policy on biting was a little lacking. It consisted of about 3 sentences. It was thorough enough to deal with the occasional bite, but not really though enough. So, we will be updating this policy this week.
The only thing this article doesn’t address is the chronic biter like we dealt with last year. What happens when you go through this procedure four, five or six times? We talked with some other churches to get their take and developed a plan that worked for us, but I’d be curious to hear what others have done or would do in that situation.
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Early Childhood Room Names
Posted on 01. Jun, 2009 by Kenny.
Okay, I’ve need a little outside inspiration. I’ve been thinking about changing the names of two rooms in our Early Childhood area. So, here are our existing rooms.
2 & 3 year old classrooms
- Tumbleweed Trail
- Little Lagoon
- Kids Kingdom
- Asteroid Alley
4 year old – kindergarten classrooms
- Beach Boulevard
- Amazon Avenue
- Treehouse Trail
- City Circle
Okay, here’s my dilema. The last four rooms are classrooms we added in January and they’re part of Kids Quest Backyard. They all have street themes. When we opened these rooms, Tumbleweed Trail has been previously retired, but we opened it back up again in February. So, we have two rooms that end with “trail.” Also, Asteroid Alley is a feeder room to Amazon Avenue. People are constantly mixing these up and it sometimes causes confusion. People accidently say Amazon Alley or Asteroid Avenue and so we don’t really know what room a person is talking about.
So, here is where I need help. The Backyard names are new and since they’re tied both to room themes (murals) and the street theme, it’s going to be harder to change them. So, I think that Tumbleweed Trail and Asteroid Alley may be the ones that need new names.
Tumbleweed Trail – It has a wild west theme to it. It has a cactus on the wall with other western type theme elements. In my head I’m even thinking “Cactus Canyon.” But, I’m open to all kinds of ideas.
Asteroid Alley – To be honest, this is my favorite room. It has a spaceship look. The walls are black with stars and planets all around and there is a rocket ship in the corner. So, I need a fun name to replace this as well. Think exciting destination. Oh, and in case you didn’t notice, the first and second letter of the room need to start with the same letter.
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Early Childhood small groups
Posted on 21. May, 2009 by Kenny.
Say what? Early Childhood small groups? Aren’t you supposed to start this once kids get into elementary? That’s been the given assumption. Some churches are starting to break this mold and give this a try. We’re going to start this really soon and we are very excited. So, please keep in mind that everything I write below this paragraph is theory and a vision of what could be.
My staff came back from Orange with all kinds of ideas. On of the ideas my Early Childhood director had concerned alignment of terminology. Basically this is where churches use the same vernacular for positions and programs throughout every ministry. It makes perfect sense. In the Early Childhood area we have three main positions. Lead teacher, room leader and caregiver. The lead teacher travels from room to room and the room leader is in charge of the room. Caregivers are simply caregivers.
So, the thought was that we call our room leaders small group leaders. This helps align terminology. It helps when recruiting as people have a better idea of what a smll gorup leader is than a room leader. Then we started to brainstorm and think outside the bun. One of Gateway’s core strategies is to connect people in small groups. We believe that life change happens best in the context of personal relationships. Although we do have kids in early childhood who have great relationships with their caregivers and room leaders, but it isn’t expressly intentional. It just happens. However, if this is a value of our church, what if we made relational development intentional in early childhood? What if rather than just have the name “small group leader” in early childhood, we actually changed the job description so that it really was a small group leader?
So, it isn’t going to necessarily look like small groups in elementary or adults, but it will be a small group. We’d follow the same strategy we are with elementary. Althouh we may have 15-20 kids in a room, we’ll run reports to see who the regularaly attending kids in that room are. Those kids would be in the small group leader’s small group. Now, that leader wouldn’t gather his/her kids in a small huddle each Sunday (unless they are in one of the 4-kindergarten rooms where they actually do that). However, this small group leader would intentionally plan to have specific one on one time with the 8-10 kids who are in their small group. The other caregivers are there to help take care of the rest of the kids, but the small group leader has a laser focus. Outside of Sunday, this leader would call the families or kids and send postcards. A relationship would be developed. Even though all the kids in this small group wouldn’t necessarily experience a “group-like” experience, they would each have a shared/personal experience with their leader.
The beauty of this plan is that we can essentially start small groups with our babies. That’s right, a four moth old can be in a small group. All they have to do is come on a semi-regular basis and they’ll be assigned to that room’s small group leader.
So, what do you think? Do you think it will work? In about six months, we should be able to let you know. I’d appreciate any ideas you might have.
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Operation: Name My Trailer
Posted on 15. Aug, 2008 by Kenny.
Our facility is full and we’ve resorted to portable buildings… otherwise know as modular buildings… or as we like to say in South Georgia… trailers.
We have such a nice facility but for the meantime we needed to provide some extra space for our kids. Adding two of these portables will give us space for up to 120 kids (but comfortably at 80 more kids). We’re not really expecting a bunch of new kids since our services have been pretty full. It’s more about offloading space and redistributing kids. We’ve had kids meeting in spaces that were not really intended to be meeting spaces. So, in a few more weeks we’ll be moving into these buildings. They’re being painted to match the color decor of our existing buildings and the interior is being decorated to look fun and exciting like the rest of our rooms.
The kids who will be moving out to the portables are 3.5 year olds to Kindergartners. It’s the oldest part of our preschool area. The Children’s Ministry at Gateway is called Kids Quest. The Elementary age it called Kids Quest, the youngest kids (0-2.5 years old) is called Kid’s Quest Babies and the preschool wing is called Kids Quest Junior. Now the bulk of Kids Quest Junior will be moved into the portables.
Currently our preschool rooms have names such as Little Lagoon, Kids Kingdom, Asteroid Ally and Tumbleweed Trail. We’ll be naming each of the rooms in the portables similar names. There will be a beach theme room, a jungle room, an underwater room and something else as well.
However, in a meeting today we discussed how we don’t want to call these buildings portables, trailers or modulars. We want them to feel like a destination. We’ll put up signs and such, but we need to have a name for them. Something that maybe sounds intriguing or exciting. So it’s a part of Kids Quest Juniors and is a collection of four additional rooms. Any ideas on a good name for the buildings or the area. Perhaps it will even be another division after Kids Quest Juniors, but before Kids Quest Elementary. Any ideas you might have would be incredibly helpful!
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