Earlier I wrote the Introduction about the issue at hand in our Children’s Ministry about what to do with our Kindergarten age children as they transition between learning styles.  I said that I thought there were 3 milestone questions to consider.

#1  What does Kindergarten at their school look like?

When I was a kindergartner there was a separate Kindergarten building in our city that only housed the 5-6 year old crowd.  But, in Lubbock, TX the Kindergartners attend school with Elementary students up to 5th grade.  So the trauma and shock that I felt in 1st grade, isn’t the same for 1st graders in Lubbock.  It’s more of a Kindergarten experience.  Kindergartners in Lubbock are use to being on a bus, being dropped off into long hallways, and attending PE classes twice a week.  If I’m not careful, then I plan around an educational model used 30 years ago, and not what my kids in my city are accustomed to.

What does this mean for me? It means that maybe moving Kindergartners to the Elementary environments at our church, might not be as eventful as I think it is.  The kids that I think may NOT be ready for a change, are actually overdue for a change.

In your city it might look different.  You might work mostly with homeschool children, or maybe the kids at your church attend a Kindergarten center, or maybe your parents just don’t want the status quo of these transitions and milestones tampered with.  Whatever the situation, it’s worth evaluating what is unique about your location when it come to Kindergarten learning.

I’d love to hear about the different Kindergarten formats you have.  Do share!

It’s that time of year in our Children’s Ministry when I start to deliberately look at moving our restless Kindergartners to a more mature Elementary environment.  We’ve worked for a few years to make the environments similar in style and substance, but different only in how we teach the content.  In our Early Childhood areas there is a much higher teacher to child ratio (not as high as I’d like!), and we know that kids learn better in a smaller environment.  However, as a kid matures they fit better in large group environments due to better behavior.  That isn’t to say that large group environments are always best for the kid, because we do a small group ministry to these older kids as well.  I’ll save that discussion for another blog post!

Back to the matter at hand: there has been discussion over the years about moving Kindergartners to the Elementary environment earlier, or maybe delaying their graduation to the Elementary areas until 2nd grade and creating a special K & 1st grade learning space.  I personally love this idea, but facility limits as well as a lack of volunteers currently leave this as just an idea at the moment.  Theories abound on what may or not be best, but what we really need to look into are the natural milestones that happen in the life of the Kindergartner learners at our church.  For this transition there are 3 milestone questions to consider.  Over the next few posts, I will lay out the three questions I’ve had to tackle as I look for what will be best for these delicate 5 and 6 year old learners of God’s Word.

If you’ve not registered for The Orange Conference, then go ahead and kick yourself.  You’ve missed out on a great special that expired last week.  However…it’s not too late.  In fact, there is still time to register and still save some money on those that might wait until the absolute last minute to register.

Register your group between February 22 and March 18 and pay $280 per person.  That’s $20 off the regular price of $300!  Let’s do the math for a minute.  If you take 3 people to Orange you can save $60, but you could save $1,000 if you take 50 people!

PLUS, that is not all…

Your church or organization will get 6 months of free curriculum from OrangeLeaders.com!* This leadership material is an incredible resource to use with your volunteers during training events as well as for your own personal growth.

*Access to your OrangeLeaders.com subscription will be available beginning on April 1, 2010. Access to download your materials will be given for a period of three months, although the materials may be used in your environments through December 31, 2010. This offer does not apply to current subscribers to OrangeLeaders.com. Coupons to access the free materials will be emailed to each qualifying group leader during the week of March 22, 2010. Questions? Call 877.313.9826 or email orangeconference@rethinkgroup.org

Since May of 2009, I’ve been self-hosting this little web presence with Dreamhost using the Wordpress platform.  First of all, I stand to benefit financially from you signing up from Dreamhost, but I can’t more highly recommend them.  Why?  It’s cheap, and it’s novice-friendly setup for Wordpress users is perfect for newbies like me.  Seriously, cheap and easy.  If you’re interested hit that Dreamhost badge over to your right, or just click HERE.

If you’re not currently on Wordpress, then make it happen for yourself.  It’s so much easier and tweakable than any other platform.  And the added bonus of using Wordpress is that you instantly join a community of people willing to help and offer input.  Collaboration at it’s Wordpress best!

The plugin feature of Wordpress has been my favorite part of the experience.  In that spirit, here are a few plugins that I’ve found to be highly beneficial since moving over to Wordpress:

All in One SEO Pack
This little plugin easily ties SEO data into each blog post.  As a newbie, I didn’t quite get it’s benefit at first; but now I see that it really makes my posts easier to find through search engines.  I took the time to add SEO data to old posts, and it even drove traffic to those lost and lonely post from years pasts.

W3 Total Cache
I don’t totally understand this plugin, but I know that since I moved from WP_Super Cache to this my load times have been lightning fast.  Fast is good in the web world, right?

Amazon Associate Filter
This little plugin is magic.  It automatically ties in all Amazon links to my Amazon Affiliate ID.  Cha-Ching!

I moved over from a Blogger platform to Wordpress, and I found these three plugins to be life-savers:

Batch Categories
When I migrated over to Wordpress, I spent hours changing my categories and working to make old posts easier to find. Then I found this tool and did what had taken me hours in about 10 minutes. It allows you to do what the name of it is. Change categories of posts in a batch, instead of individually.

Blogger To Wordpress Redirection
This is a great plugin that automatically moves old blogger permalinks to your new wordpress permalinks. This was important for me, because I changed my naming setup when I moved to Wordpress.

Maintain Blogger Permalinks
This works in conjunction with the other plugin, and maintains all those original http://littlepastor.blogspot.com (Don’t ask!) links that exists in the Internets.

There are other plugins I use, like Askimet, Feedburner, Woopra, Google Analytics, and other Wordpress tool plugins.  It wouldn’t be an adequate Wordpress blog help post, if I didn’t mention the help that John has provided at www.human3rror.com and www.churchcrunch.com.  It was even from his site that I picked up the cool toolbar over on the right side of my blog!

I’d love to know what you’re using.  What am I missing out on?

This is a followup to a post I did back in August of 2009 // Creative Volunteer Training

Two things about me as a Children’s Pastor:

1. I hate meetings.
2. I hate meetings.

A few years ago, I read Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni and his book has helped me work to make meetings more beneficial with my staff (at least in my humble opinion.)  I have however continued to struggle with how to communicate with volunteers in an effective way.

How do I train them?

How can I communicate best practices?

How do I let them know about changes in the curriculum?

But most importantly, how do I do these things without calling meetings for every weekend or every month?

My solution has been something I call “Kidsplace Unscripted”  The unscripted videos are my way of communicating values to my volunteer team in a non-confrontational, non pizza eating after church way.  I film these videos every two or three weeks using my Macbook, iMovie and uploading them to Vimeo.  I have had issues with Vimeo, but since they now offer mobile viewing on iPhones I’m back on board with their video greatness.

So after a year of doing these video’s what new and what have I changed?

• I had about a 30% open rate in emails and newsletters. When I started sending videos, it jumped to about 50%, and now I have an open and click rate has jumped to about 80%.
• I have too many leaders to personally meet with them all each week, and I’ve seen these videos help with my ability to keep in touch somewhat with everyone.  It’s gonna sound crazy, but people feel like they know my heart and passions without even meeting me.
• I’ve now added a different video series just for my Preschool and Kindergarten leaders.  They were asking for it, when word got around about the Elementary videos.  I obliged, and tweaked the content to fit that demographic.
• In 2010, I’m tackling best practices in each area.  I’m defining a best practice as those things that we do each and every week with no exception.  They are the same whether doing large group storytelling, or leading a group of 2nd grade girls in a small group.  So far so good in 2010.

Here are my most recent videos for both Preschool/Kindergarten and Elementary.

Kidsplace Unscripted #12 from Jonathan Cliff on Vimeo.

Preschool Unscripted #5 from Jonathan Cliff on Vimeo.

There is a Vimeo shortcut to my videos on the right side of this blog, just click the tiny V.  You can also visit my Vimeo page directly at www.vimeo.com/jonathancliff and even subscribe to my new videos at http://vimeo.com/jonathancliff/videos/rss.

For the record:  I do still have meetings from time to time, but the Unscripted videos have allowed me to be much more intentional about when we do need to have in-person meetings with volunteers and those on my ministry team.