Tag Archives: teaching Sunday School

Sunday School Teaching

Icebreakers for Sunday School

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When little children walk into class the opening day of Sunday school, they can play together after five minutes like they’ve known each other five years! No need for icebreakers here. But kids ages eleven and older can spend an hour propping up the walls if icebreakers aren’t provided. Icebreakers can be a lifesaver! Here are our three favorite icebreakers for Sunday school, youth group, or introducing a lot of new people into a class of older students:

The Truth Will Set You Free

Each person in class takes a turn making three statements about him or herself. Two are true, and one isn’t. An example would be, “I play five instruments. I was born in Oklahoma. My mom was a dancer on Broadway.” The group must take guesses as to which is the false statement, and then the person must confess. Encourage students to reveal statements about themselves that will be memorable to others. For example, “I went on six mission trips to Honduras” is more interesting than “I am seventeen,” though all statements are welcome.

Who Am I?

Write on index cards the names of Bible characters or movie or TV stars. Tape one name to each person’s back. The students then have to begin determining the name that is on their back. They can only ask one question to each person. They can’t ask a direct question, such as “What’s the name on my back?” The person they ask should only answer a direct question, such as “Is the name on my back male or female?” or “Is this a person on Nickelodeon?” As people determine the names on their backs, they should sit down and not have to answer any more questions. This will make the overly shy ones get a hustle on, lest they be the last ones standing! Many friendships have formed thanks to this game.

Puzzle Partners

Take sheets of paper and draw a squiggly line down the center that looks like two puzzle pieces fitting nicely together. Don’t do any two alike! Cut them in half, and place them in a pile, one just underneath its mate. Wait until everyone arrives, then give them out in this order! The order will prevent puzzle pieces from being out there that have no mate! If there is an uneven number of people, the teacher can opt to participate. Have participants find the person who has the piece of the puzzle that matches theirs. Then, they inquire about their matching piece partner and write down three things about him or her. When it comes time for introductions, have the matching piece partners introduce each other, rather than having everyone introduce themselves.

All of the icebreakers above have worked quite successfully with kids over the ages of ten. These icebreakers even work on adult groups, so use them freely and have fun!

Sunday School Teaching

Texting Your Sunday School Students Keeps It Real

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Statistics show that 82 million people are texting regularly, and from what parents say, 80 million of those people are kids.  This new means of communication has taken the youth by storm. And you’ll be surprised what will happen if you text your Sunday school students a couple times during the week.

Text Sunday School students to keep lessons alive all week

Texting is the way kids communicate with each other in their own world, using their own lingo.  Most are well aware of adult intimidation, which only makes texting more attractive.  With this vast difference in attitude about texting among youngsters and adults, if you text your students, you are proving two points that will make them sit up and take notice.

1. You’re not siding against them
2. You not only text, you know their mindset

Learn texting Lingo!  It’s fun!

If you simply send a sentence “blast” to your class it will have a reverse effect and do more harm than good.  Unless you can put your sentence into their language, you will come off as a bit phony, and it would be better not to send any message at all.

How to learn the texting lingo.

Texting is mostly abbreviations and acronyms, and an Internet search will bring up dozens for you to study. Many lists are available on the Internet.  Here are some examples:
• & = And
• NE = Any
• AML = All my love
• BRB = Be Right Back
• BCNU = Be seeing you
• BC = Because
• B4 = Before
• BFF = Best friends forever
• BF = Boyfriend
• BTW = By the way

And so it goes through the entire alphabet.  If you don’t have time to do all this translating, you can also have your computer translate your sentence for you.

Your computer can find the right lingo.

By typing the following question into Google, the results will surprise you:  Can you translate this sentence from English into texting lingo?  It will bring up several sites that allow to you type the regular English into a window, and the site will produce its text-lingual equivalent!  One such site is www.lingo2word.com, which translates on one click after you type.

Sometimes it’s best to make a simple statement to students like “Do not forget to pray…like we talked about!” That way you’re not threatening to “use their brains for something else” after a long day in school.  However complicated questions can fun sometimes because they use a variety of text lingo that the students will have to translate off their heads.

For example, let’s say you sent the following message through the text translator of www.lingo2word.com: “Which character from the Old Testament do you consider someone you admire for their achievements and admirable qualities?  Students would see this:

wich char frm d Old Testament do you considA yr hero? plz B prepd 2 tel me on Sunda

To text your Sunday school students, you need to ask for their cell phone numbers.  You ought to have these handy anyway for other purposes.  Use your own cell phone’s instructions to create a blast text “list” of your students, so that you only have to hit SEND once.  Then, twice a week or so, put Jesus back in front of them.  Use what you know about your own students to dictate how often you text them and what you will say, because the most important thing is to keep it fun and entertaining!

u shd txt yr sunday skool stdnts whnvr uv somit QL 2 sA!!

Sermons for Kids

6 Ways To Create Exciting Sermons For Kids

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George Burns once said, “The secret of a good sermon is to have a good opening and a good ending and to have the two as close together as possible.”  Burns may have been thinking about children as well as adults.  Until recently sermons for kids were not given much thought.

These days, many churches are looking for ways to create kid-friendly sermons, either in the congregation during regular services or in Sunday school sessions so that kids get a chance to practice for longer sermons later.  These six tips will help if you want your sermons to be more appealing to children:

1.  Quality over Quantity.

Sermons for kids
Sermons for kids don’t need to be long, but they do need to be engaging

Always remember, when it comes to a sermon, measure its duration by the ancient proverb, “More is a bore, brief is a relief.”   Here’s a lesser-known fact about attention spans:  A kid’s age will generally determine the number of minutes he can listen before his mind starts to wander.  A three-year-old will listen for three minutes.  Adults themselves generally have a 22-minute attention span—that’s it!  Performers consider the saying, “Always leave them wanting more,” as sacred as the Golden Rule when it comes to a presentation. Old as that statement may be, it’s still as powerful as ever.

2.  Humor:  Make ‘em laugh!

Remember that familiar quote, “Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.”  It’s interesting to see how a congregation relaxes when the minister injects something to make the congregation laugh at the opening of his sermon.   Be it adults or children, you can read their body language while they laugh or sit back with a smile that says, “Okay, you got my attention, and I’m ready to listen to what you have to say.”

3.  Don’t feel the need to reinvent the wheel!

Humor, however, is a gift and an art form, and unless you have had a funny experience to share, go to the experts for a source.        Fortunately, the Internet has an endless supply of humorous material from the sermon experts, and it’s yours for the taking. This is one case where stealing is not a sin.  Those experts consider it a compliment to be copied and quoted, and that’s why their jokes are for sale in books and downloads.

4. Avoid sarcasm:  Kids just don’t get it.

One pastor asked a third grader what she wanted to be when she grew up as part of the sermon introduction.  When she said an astronaut, he replied quickly, “I guess that means you’ll be a spacey adult!”  When the congregation laughed, she thought they didn’t approve of her dream and was embarrassed. Kids love a good pun (what do cows do on weekends?  Go to the Moooooo-vies!).  But they are literal in their thinking, don’t get irony, and will not understand if you say the opposite of what you mean.  Keep it clever but not ironic or sarcastic!

5. Find opportunities to make the Bible real to them.

Children find it hard to take the events that happened to people centuries ago, who wore robes and sandals instead of jeans and athletic shoes, and make them meaningful in today’s world. Each and every event as well as every scripture applies to life now as well as to life then, and sermons can bring Bible heroes to life. Unless the children understand the lasting values and basic truths of the Bible, you have wasted your time.

6. Include them!

Kids listen better when they feel a part of things.  Use sermons as a time to ask questions, take polls, and herald all answers from children.  Some of the answers will be priceless (and if you don’t laugh the congregation will stop short of it).  Minutes used involving children directly are minutes you can erase from the minute-per-year attention span statistics.

Making kids feel essential is an important part of worship.  Schools are increasing their hours.  They are also tightening up on the adults that are allowed on school property and the places therein that adults are allowed to go.  One of the downsides is that kids’ exposure to adults is greatly diminished in this generation.  Kids always learned to become adults by copying adults, admiring adults and listening to adults.  Let the church be at the forefront in helping kids mature in Christ, and a great area is kid-friendly sermons!