Perhaps the idea overwhelms you, or you are short on finances, or you simply don’t have time. We can testify, that in spite of a very tight and busy schedule and a VERY tight budget… you CAN host a very successful children’s ministry activity!

April 16, 2007

Issue #2

1. Reasons To Have a Children’s Church Quarterly Activity

2. Ideas For Quarterly Activities

3. How To Prepare for Your Quarterly Activity

Reasons To Have a Children’s Church Quarterly Activity

• Because you genuinely love the children in your ministry and you *want* to spend time with them outside the children’s church hour on Sunday.

• Because quarterly activities are so much fun that they cause the children’s love and respect for their children’s church workers to increase drastically, and this in turn reduces discipline and behavior problems in your ministry overall.

• Because quarterly activities encourage visitor participation, which potentially builds the attendance in your ministry.

• Because quarterly activities build faithfulness and loyalty in the children toward *your* church.

Ideas For Quarterly Activities

• Skating Party -- We have rented out the entire skating rink for our quarterly activity, and we were able to provide our own music and concessions. We charged the kids $2 each to cover the cost of the rink rental. If you have an adequate budget, you might elect to let the kids come for free. We have done this both on Sunday after church and on an off-night during the week. There are pros and cons to each arrangement. The times we did this activity on Sunday caused us to have a much greater than average attendance for our Sunday Schools and Children’s Church. We took the children to the rink immediately after church and allowed them to eat a sack lunch (which we provided) on the way. We took off all shoes on the bus and put them in boxes to prevent mix-ups with shoes and kids that belonged together getting separated! The advantage to a skating party mid-week is that we have frequently been successful in getting entire unchurched families from our bus routes to attend along with their children. During these events we prepared large pans of sloppy joe filling or barbeque pulled pork to serve on buns, accompanied by chips and canned soft drinks. We charged enough per individual or family to cover this expense.

• Picnic -- We actually had our annual children’s picnic this past Saturday, which turned into an indoor pizza party with games, due to inclement weather. Either way, as long as you have a couple of hours cram packed with fun and games, the children will have a blast. We played several relay games as well as individual games in which the kids had opportunities to win neat prizes. Our activity cost almost $100, which consisted of $60 worth of pizza plus chips, drinks, cookies, and many prizes. If it had not been cold and stormy, we were planning to have an outdoor barbeque with grilled burgers and hot dogs. Sandwiches and chips would work, too! I found lots of great game ideas at Ultimate Camp Resource.

• Slumber Party -- You must use extreme caution with this nowadays, but I have hosted many very successful and fun overnight parties in my children’s ministries. You will want to have the parents drop their children off at about 6:00 on Friday night and plan to pick them up at 10:00 the next morning (I have provided transportation for my slumber parties before -- use your discretion based on the needs of your kids). Start with some really fun action games: relays, scavenger hunts, etc. As the evening progresses, your activities will become calmer and calmer. You may find it helpful to separate the boys and girls at some time to do gender specific activities. For example, I once invited a Mary Kay Consultant to a slumber party to teach my 10-12 year old girls how to care for their skin. We’ve also done manicures and other primping activities. You will definitely not want to miss Ed Dunlop’s ideas for overnight activities in his highly recommended book How Do I Get These Kids to Listen?: Practical Ways to Gain and Hold Attention in the Classroom.

  One thing he does is bus the kids to McDonald’s (separate buses, separate McDonald’s for each gender) at about 11:00 p.m. That way, they have the whole place pretty much to themselves. They leave shortly before midnight, and by then the kids are ready to sleep! I have also had meals that the kids prepared themselves, such as do-it-yourselves pizzas with all the crusts and toppings laid out ahead of time. Between eating and activities, you will definitely want to plan a time of preaching or before-bed devotion. You can have another session in the morning after breakfast (which we always keep simple -- Pop Tarts or cereal and milk!). Then it’s time to pack up sleeping bags and belongings and return the facility to the same clean state it was in when you arrived!

• Harvest Party or Fall Festival -- This one is a little more complicated and requires more adult helpers, but it is so much fun! Many churches use this as a substitute activity for Halloween to keep their kids off the street, or it can simply be used as your fall activity. We always set up carnival style, allowing adults and teens in the church to sponsor, decorate, and run booths. The booths might include wet sponge throwing, strobe light volleyball, apple bobbing, face painting, cupcake walk, a maze (built out of refrigerator boxes that the kids can crawl through), a jail, a balloon bust board, wheel of fortune, ring toss, football throw, duck pond… you get the idea! One good idea is to use this activity as a follow-up for your fall campaign, during which the kids can earn tickets to be spent at the Harvest Party. The tickets could be used to play the games or buy concessions. If advertised properly, the Harvest Party or Fall Festival can be a great community outreach (our church even once hosted a Winter Wonderland with similar booths). Great prizes can be obtained cheaply at...

• Local Attractions -- If you live near a zoo, cave, or really nice city park, then by all means use those as field trip destinations. You can either plan for your ministry budget to cover the expense, charge it to the kids, or split it. I have found, however, that generally activities costing more than $5 or so to the kids are not well received and attended. You can keep expenses down by having everyone bring a sack lunch (bring extra sandwiches for anyone who forgets).

How To Prepare for Your Quarterly Activity

• A poorly promoted activity will fail. How can the children attend if they don’t know about your activity, or if they don’t find out before their calendars fill up? We generally start talking about an activity in children’s church up to a month ahead of time. We send an informational flier home with the kids on Sunday two weeks before the event. Then we have another (more fun looking) colorful flier passed out by the bus captains the Saturday before. The week of the event my husband and I visit the kids on our free evenings, remind them of the activity, and have permission slips signed as needed.

• Make sure you secure plenty of adult volunteers -- and then get double that many! A poorly chaperoned children’s ministry event is a recipe for disaster! At our recent activity we had an adult for every three children in attendance. We asked several people in the church to come -- parents with children who are part of our ministry, parents with children who are not part of our ministry, older church members who love children, and teens in the youth department. None of these volunteers had a lot of work or responsibilities; they just provided extra eyes and extra hands for clean up, which was a blessing. Chris & I actually participated in the games with the kids while our helpers dealt with bandaids on skinned knees, kids who needed to potty, picking up the pizzas, pouring drinks, etc. Our volunteers told us Sunday that they enjoyed attending our activity very much; and by participating, perhaps many of them will develop a burden for the children’s ministry that will provoke them to be in prayer for us or assist in future activities.

• Overfill your schedule. It is far better to exhaust the kids than bore them! Our fun day was hopping from one activity to another. I had prepared a list with dozens of potential games, when in fact we only had time to play about half of them. I was prepared, however, in the event that I miscalculated how long something would take or in case we picked a “dud” activity that had to be quickly pitched in favor of something more fun! Our schedule was pretty loose, simply sticking by the list of games, until lunch, which was promptly at noon. After lunch Chris did a gospel presentation using CEF’s Gospel Flipper Flapper. We ended with some calmer games, since we did not want to deal with regurgitated pizza! The kids all left full and happy.

• If the children will need to bring special items or wear certain clothing, be sure they know ahead of time. We experienced several foot and leg injuries due to kids running around in crocs and flip flops! Next time we will tell them -- tennis shoes only! If you have a problem with children in your area dressing extremely inappropriately, you may want to advise them on a basic dress code, such as no shorts or mini-skirts.

  Above all -- have fun! My husband and I have every bit as much fun as the kids at our activities, if not more! I tease Chris that he is a 4-year old trapped in an adult body! We run and participate in every activity. My husband was hopping all over the place in a potato sack, and I was “It” in two of the games; I thought I’d collapse before it was over with! Probably not the best move for a pregnant children’s church worker…

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