This is the first post in a series called “Where the Wild Things Are” in which we will look at how we can better minister to our “wild things” with behavior management strategies.
How our ministry begins each week will greatly set the tone for kids’ behavior. What do your kids walk into each week? Here are some things we can do to make sure we’re not gearing kids up for bad behavior:
1. Make sure your adults get there before the kids! Set an expectation for your volunteers to arrive at least 15 minutes before the service begins, then let parents know that is when you can begin accepting kids into classrooms. You know kids will find many ways to entertain themselves with limited adult supervision.
2. Engage children as soon as they arrive. Again, kids will find ways to entertain themselves. The longer they are expected to sit and wait for the class or service to start, the more antsy they will be and the more creative they will be in finding activity. We identified that the minutes that kids are waiting for large group worship to begin greatly dictated the behavior during the service. We have a “fun guy” start doing funny games and audience participation 10 minutes before the start of the service so that kids have something to watch and participate in while they are waiting.
3. Don’t over-stimulate them before you even get started. While you want the kids to be engaged, you don’t want them to be bonkers during the rest of the service. For example, a game where every kid eats three doughnuts is awesome for intial engagement, but not so awesome when they are bouncing off the walls during the Bible lesson.
4. Remind them of expectations early. We’ll talk more about expectations in a later post, but whatever yours are, communicate them early on to the kids.
3 Responses to “Let the wild rumpus begin…”