I’ve introduced the change we’ve made to Elevate Jr. earlier this week, and yesterday I talked about how we are using Elevate Jr.

Today let’s tackle What I like about Elevate Jr.:

• It’s consistent.  It has long been a challenge to maintain a consistent level of teaching across all classrooms.  I needed something that would guarantee me that children were all going home with a biblical truth that was consistently taught to each child in each classroom.  I cannot overstate this enough, seriously.
• It has forced our classrooms into a schedule.  I’ll be the first to admit that it has been a major weakness of our Early Childhood departments that we have not had a consistent schedule.  Some teachers were spending 45 minutes on crafts, while others were skipping it all together.  Elevate Jr. has been awesome at making it easy to walk down the 3 year old hallway, and realistically know what should be happening in each classroom.  It is going to hold our teachers much more accountable to doing what needs to be done and not getting bogged down in one area or another.
• No More Snack Time!  There just isn’t time for it anymore, because Elevate Jr. has made our classrooms more deliberate about every minute of the classroom experience.  Elevate Jr. has allowed us to abandon the expensive, lunch-ruining snack tradition that exists in so many different Early Childhood areas.  This change alone has scared away a few leaders.  I’ve learned that snack time was being used as a crutch for poor planning…and that is an entire separate conversation.
• The video portions are very well done.  I cannot state this more clearly to my Children’s Pastor friends: NOT all video materials are created equal.  Elevate Jr. is very well done.  The colors are vivid and sharp, the set designs are wonderfully created, the actors are lively and captivating to the kids, and the DVD itself is super easy to use.
• It’s not a video-only curriculum.  While the video elements are key to teaching the lesson each week, it is not the sole presentation of the biblical elements.  My group leaders still have to prepare, lead, and become engaging storytellers.  This is a fact that I’ve had to demonstrate this to my existing leaders, so that they will not be misguided in their belief that we are asking our televisions to teach our kids on Sunday Mornings.
• It gives leaders the opportunity to put more time into building relationships with the kids.  Elevate Jr. is great at taking the main teaching burden off my teachers (although it is still there in a smaller form), and instead puts the emphasis on what happens during classroom activity, main point activity and other elements that include teacher-child interaction.

If you use Elevate Jr., what am I missing?  Anything that you love about it that I forgot?

Earlier I talked about launching Elevate Jr. in our Early Childhood areas. Today I wanted to fill you in on how we are currently using Elevate Jr. and how we transitioned to it from a traditional Sunday School classroom format.

• We tested it out during our Saturday Night services for 8 weeks.  It was a great success, and we learned a lot about what we needed to do to make it work on our much busier Sunday Mornings.
• My Early Childhood Coordinator and I held special training meetings on the four Wednesday nights leading up to our Sunday Morning launch.  At these meetings we provided dinner, and did the first lesson of Spy Chase Jr. for the leaders.  Yes, we treated them like they were the children.
  • These meetings were key, because they helped creat buy-in from some very important people and it helped move out some that needed to be moved out.  Know what I mean?
  • During the training we were clear with our leaders that we are only married to our spouses; we’re not married to one particular way of using this curriculum, and we’re open and willing to tweak how we use Elevate Jr.  I think this helped ease people’s minds about doing something new.
• We are using Spy Chase Jr. to launch with.  I believe it is the first of the Elevate Jr. series’ that was created.
• We are using the Large Group Format, with the entire video portion of the curriculum being shown at the same time.  We are not however using it as a true large group.  We are gathering the age groups that were previously split into one area for the video.
  • For example, the 3 year old children check-in to their separate rooms based on their last names; then move to one room to gather for the large group video, then dismiss back to their separate rooms for the classroom activities.  The same is done with the 4’s together, and the 5 & 6’s together.
• We print the large group manual for each classroom leader at our print shop, taking out the activities we will NOT do that week.  In other words, we only give the teachers what they will need.  This is a big difference from giving leaders a teacher’s manual, and telling them to not use certain elements of that same teacher’s manual.  Why create needless confusion?
• We have asked the stronger of the two age group leaders to lead the video time with the kids.  For the most part, we haven’t had a problem with this and we hope to allow both group leaders to eventually split the video teaching time.

Am I leaving anything out?  What would you like to know before I get to the postivies and negatives later this week?

This past Sunday Morning we made a major change in our Early Childhood areas at Trinity.  We have moved to Elevate Jr., and it has been an exciting change for us.  We have a specially-designed program for our nursery through 2 year olds that my staff and I wrote, but we have relied on curriculum for 3 year old through Kindergarten.  This 3 year old through Kindergarten age bracket is what makes up our Early Childhood area, and it is comprised of 12 individual classrooms over two services (Two 3-year old rooms, two 4-year old rooms, and two 5 & 6-year old rooms) total on a Sunday Morning.

First let me say that I have used Gospel Light’s Movers & Shakers, Group Publishing’s Faithweaver, and some other stuff that I can’t quite remember.  I think most of these curriculum’s have some great things going for them, but at our church the alignment of kids being in classrooms and the burden put on our teachers to lead these classrooms has been heavy.  I know that every church is different, and every church has unique circumstances that dictate what will and will NOT work.  That being said, I was looking for something much different than had been used in the previous 45 years of our church.  I have also been using Elevate for our Elementary services over the past two years with some success.  The adaptability of the curriculum has been great for us, and what we do would probably differ from what others do.

In Early Childhood, I think I have found something that fits the bill. Because I’m a blogger, and want to milk everything for all it’s worth, I’m going to split this review into 3 categories.  First will be How I use Elevate Jr., next What I like about it Elevate Jr., and finally What I don’t like about Elevate Jr.

Are you using Elevate Jr.?  I’d love to know how you use it, and what you’ve found to make it more beneficial for your environments?  Please, make yourself a part of the conversation!  Don’t be a lurker!

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In case you’re wondering what Elevate Jr. is and how to use it (according to their instructions) watch the video’s below.  The quality of Elevate Jr. is MUCH better than the quality of these videos!

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Giving away a portable stage set for a family experience to one church.  This is a $15,000 value.  Churches can submit their written stories to the team onsite at the Real-Fake Buildings exhibit booth and they will partner with the staff of The reThink Group to select one lucky and deserving winner.

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Last week I sent out a survey to all the wonderful people that volunteer to work in our Early Childhood areas at the church.  More specifically it was sent to those people that are lead teachers.  I worded it a little playful, but not too much.  I wanted people to feel they could be honest, without hurting someone’s feelings.  It is also my goal, whether they fill out the survey or not; for them to know that their opinion has some weight.  The entire thing shouldn’t have taken more than 5 or 10 minutes, so it wasn’t a terrible chore.

So far I’ve gotten some great feedback.  By great I mean it made me cry it was so freaking honest.

Those responding to the survey were not required to provide their name, but were given the option if they wanted to.  All questions were required to be answered to advance through the survey, except where an optional response is noted.  I used Pollograph for the survey, and I can NOT say enough great things about the service.  It is a super A+ online survey service.

The following are the questions given and responses offered:

1. Do the Children in your classroom seem to enjoy your classroom?

Always

Sometimes

Never

2. Do you feel that the Children in your class are learning Biblical principals?

Always. The kids can recite the main point at the door when they leave.

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.

Never.  We just play and eat snacks.

3. Are you adequately provided with everything you need to teach your class effectively?

4. Do you feel prepared each week to teach the children?

5. Are you taking your teacher’s guide home each week to look over the material and prepare for the lesson?

6. Do you feel valued by the Children’s Ministry leadership at Trinity?

7. Are you actively attending services during the services you don’t work with Children?

8. Are you involved in a Life Group?

9. How involved do you feel parents are in your classroom?

10. Which of these options would you employ to connect with families if given the choice?

Allow ‘Others’, May select more than one

11. Are you currently teaching in an area that is comfortable for you and is compatible with your teaching style?

12. How would you rate yourself in the following classroom settings:

13. What brings you the most joy in teaching your class?

Optional Written Response…

14. What seems to be the biggest obstacle for you in teaching your class?

Optional Written Response…

15. What are your thoughts on the current Curriculum

16. Any Additional thoughts on our current curriculum?

Optional Written Response…

17. What is your opinion of the past training sessions that have been offered?

18. Is there a specific topic you would like addressed in a training session?

Optional Written Response…

19. Here’s your big chance: Is there one area of Children’s Ministry you would like to see changed and how do you feel this could best come about?

Optional Written Response…