How to Keep Kids Attention During Children's Church Lessons
Keeping the attention of your students during a Sunday shcool lesson can be a daunting task. There are some simple principles you can follow to keep the kids attention on the lesson.
- Difficulty:
- Moderately Easy
Instructions
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Be enthusiastic. An enthusiastic teacher will demand attention through the changes of tone and volume in her voice. Move around a lot and use hand gesture, always smile. An enthusiastic teacher just seems more fun too.
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Use visual aides. When telling a story you can use pictures or an object that has something to do with the story. Your pictures can be photos or poster sized drawings. Several objects or pictures would be ideal. The goal is to keep the children focused on the front of the classroom and on the lesson.
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Use illusions. If you can find an illusion or trick that can be applied to the lesson, use one; the kids love them and keep focused on the lesson.
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Get them to interact. Ask questions that put your students in the lesson. Question can be about how they would act if they were in the characters situation or how they feel about something in the story.
You can also use physical activity to get them involved. A good way to do this is to make a list of things the kids will do if you say a certain word. For example: you are teaching about the feeding of the 5000 with two fish and loaves of bread. Tell the children that every time you say the word fish, they have to make a fish face; every time you say loaves or bread, the have to make the motion of kneading bread.
You can come up with actions to go along with almost any story. This will keep the children listen carefully. -
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For younger children you can use a puppet to tell the story. The small children will enjoy it and pay attention even if they can see you moving your lips.
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Tips & Warnings
keep teaching the lesson, even if you have made to your planned amount of time, if the students remain interested. Don't pass up the rare opportunity to keep teaching.
Don't try to force a lesson if the students aren't interested; move on to the next activity.
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Comments
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sonni57
Mar 03, 2009
This is always the challenging part but fun! -
Kathy Bruins
Feb 24, 2009
Great tips! Kids are so used to video imaging that a children's leader needs to keep things moving to keep their attention. Thanks!
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moonglow
Feb 05, 2009
Great tips! It's always a struggle to keep the little ones focused!
