We have done children's church for about 10yrs now.  It is my belief that one reason kids choose to leave the church as adults is because we fail to reach them as children.  We use everything from skits, puppets, games, crafts, worship and we always have a sermon!!  Kids learn differently so we always try to use several different ways to deliver the message.  An example would be today.  We  learned about the Good samaritan.  After worship , offering and announcements, we had a short skit.  We have a clown (my husband) named "Not so smart".  Not so smart got hit by a car and was hurt.  A preacher walked by without helping, then a youth leader and finally a child who not so smart really didn't like.  The child who not so smart didn't like stoped to help him.  I then told a true story that happened with my son yesterday at the beach when him and one of his friends saved a young man who was drowning.  We then watched a 10min video that reinforced helping others.  We then went outside and played a relay game that also reinforced helping others.  Last we came in for our sermon where I read the actual scripture to the kids and talked about how this applies to their everyday life.  I always like to leave a few minutes in the end to pray with any of the kids who desire prayer.  That is just an example of what we do on any  given Sunday.  Sometimes we do puppets instead of the video or skit.  I just try to make everything relavent to the lesson we are trying to get across to the kids.  I hope this helps you some!!  Oh, and if you are concerned with the amount of workers you need to make something like that happen,  other than my husband, all my helpers are from our youth group!!  We have a very faithful group of teens that help us out.  We have from 60-90 kids every Sunday (in 2 services).  We have about 10 faithful teens that help us pull it off every week.  I tell them all the time, we could not do what we do without their help!!  I hope this helps you some!!!  God bless,  Angie

God Bless!  Angie

I have a table set up with a Christian flag, an American Flag, a Bible and an offering plate. We say our pledges and take up an offering. We do have an attendance chart also on the wall where the kids can put up a sticker when they come in.

Chairs are set up in front of the table and there is a bulletin board above the table that I place posters on - or things that we are working on.

After the pledges, etc. we sing. We do a lot of action songs like 'Father Abraham' or 'Heaven's Hokey Pokey' to get the wiggles out. We do other songs to like the 'B-I-B-L-E' and other songs that the kids know. I have CD's and player that I keep on the table.

After that we take prayer requests and have prayer.

Then we go to the snack table for snacks. Usually punch and Cheetos or Cheese-Nips.

After snack we come back to our chairs for discussion time. Generally, I will tell a Bible story and talk to them about it. Right now we are studying the Ten Commandments so each week we are talking about a new Commandment and reviewing the ones we have learned.

Next is craft time. I order crafts from Oriental Trading or sometimes we just color pages that correspond with our lesson. Right now, since we are doing the Ten Commandments I have given each child a folder with their name on it. The folder has prongs inside and each week they get to add a new page to their folder. Each page is a Commandment. Then I have stickers for each Commandment and they get a new one each week to put on the front of their folder. They keep the folders at church and will get to take them home when we are all done.

Another thing we are doing is having a movie day every couple of weeks. I found this great 5 DVD set that has two Commandments on each DVD. They are cute animated movies that the kids (and I) really enjoy! They only last about 15 to 20 each. We have popcorn and soft drinks too!

In the future I would like to do the same learning Psalm 23, verse by verse with the folders and stickers, etc. I have several other ideas such as learning about the Fruits of the Spirit , the Armor of God and the Lord's Prayer.

I would like to have a 'Friendship Day' soon. I wanted to let everyone color invitations to invite a friend to 'Friendship Day' and I wanted to teach about friendship. The story of David and Johnathan comes to my mind. And of course our best friend that is closer that a brother - Jesus. I thought it would be fun to take photos of friends together too. My though on this is to get more children involved in church.

Our Children's Church used to break up into groups after snack and go back to the Sunday School rooms, but since we didn't have many children to start we just kept them in one big group. This has worked out well. Our biggest group was last Sunday - we had 13 children. I was very happy. We are a small church and just started back our Children's Church in March. I hope that we keep growing! It's so hard to get parents to come to church and bring their children...

Melissa

Palm Harbor, FL