Kids on Mission is a great resource from the International Mission Board. Here’s a description from their site:

Through Kids On Mission videos and newslettters, children grades 1 through 6 will learn about exotic destinations, different cultures and what missionaries are doing around the world.  They will see how they can be a part of what God is doing, too!

Each quarterly KOM resource comes with video segments, activity sheets, prayer times, a detailed leader’s guide and hands-on missions ideas. You can subscribe for a small fee and automatically receive a new DVD-ROM release every quarter. If downloading large files is not a problem for you, you can access everything you need for free.

This would be a great addition to your Vacation Bible School, summer camp, or as a monthly emphasis on Sunday mornings.

How do you teach kids about international missions in your church?

The North American Mission Board has generated a very large list of memory verse and missions games. I could not access the root webpage that contains this list (www.kidzplace.org), so I have uploaded it to my site, giving full credit to NAMB. You can access the original file here, or on my site here.

Focus on the Family Canada has a great site called Kids of Integrity that provides tools for growing godly character in kids. Kids of Integrity is a set of free resources that will help you coach your kids with confidence and a clear sense of direction. Better still, Kids of Integrity will excite your children about living “God’s way.”

You can utilize this resource either as a tool for parents or for supplemental materials for a lesson you may be teaching. It is filled with lessons, memory verse activities, object lessons, Bible stories, and practical suggestions for implementing that character trait into a child’s life. You will find materials on acceptance, generosity, honesty, kindness, and more.

What other free materials do you know about for building godly character in kids?

There’s a buzz in the air. It’s a new collaborative project that brings hope to the plight of the poor children’s pastor. FREE curriculum developed by a collaborative effort. I don’t have all the details yet, but you should go sign up at the Kidmin Project in order to find out more and be some of the first to know!

I’m not sure of all the details, but I think Matt Guevara from the Cory Center is heading this up. Can’t wait for the full idea to be unveiled!

This “Totally Free VBS” is brought to you by Community Bible Church in Brooksville, FL. I’m thankful that free resources like this are being produced on a regular basis in the kidmin world. I’ve listed a few of the positives and negatives of this curriculum below:

Positives:

• Hello! It’s free!
• Writers have taken great pains to highly organize the curriculum.
• Has a preschool component.
• Proof that small churches can do great things!
• Adequate resources for every volunteer involved.
• Curriculum has separate K/1, 2/3, and 4-6th grade elements.

Negative:

• Design and graphics need some work. Perhaps someone in the Kidmin world would take that on to help with the look and feel of the curriculum.
• You can only sample the music on the website and it only allows for about 3 second clips, you really can’t get a feel for the music. Have to email in order to get the full MP3′s.
• There is no video component, but creative churches can come up with these on their own.
• Each day is Old Testament teaching. All memory verses except for Day 5 are OT. There is a salvation emphasis on day 4, but even though the curriculum mentions accepting Jesus as “your Lord and Savior,” I did not see the gospel message of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection (I Cor. 15:3-4) explicitly stated.

Overall, I think this is a worthy effort and I think could be shaped into something with even greater potential if people with the right skill sets would take some time to polish it up. As with any curriculum, you will want to consider how this could serve your ministry and adjust accordingly.

I came across this site the other day and noticed that it had a few Christmas and Easter lessons as well as some generic Bible teaching videos that you could download. Some of the links lead you to other places, but some are on the site. Here’s the catch…to get the stuff from their site, you have to register your email address.

Want a free registration tool for VBS? Then you need to check out the Web Tools application that Standard Publishing offers to anyone. I may be wrong on this and will change it if corrected, but I don’t think you even have to use their VBS program to take advantage of the registration application. I went ahead and got a free account, filled out all the info and played around with it a bit. It was easy to work with and seems to be a great tool for a church with fewer than 300 kids.

It is not extremely versatile, however. You can not use the web application to put children in groups or develop role sheets. When you want the data, you have to export it from the application into an Excel spreadsheet and then work with it from there. But if you want to manage the data yourself, which many of us do, it is a handy tool.

If you want to teach well, teach like Jesus. Today’s leadership nugget is an incredible resource for your teaching. A friend of mine from the Doctor of Education program at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary just finished his dissertation which evaluated the various ways Jesus adjusted his teaching to his audience. In educational circles, this is called differentiated instruction.

Dr. Daniel Ray has compiled an exhaustive chart of Jesus’ teaching methodologies cross-referenced with the audience and situation Jesus was in. This is a fabulous tool to have by your side as you plan children’s messages or large group teaching.

Here it is:

Jesus Teaching Method Chart

Interact: How have you used differentiated instruction in your ministry?

This month’s Leadership Nugget is a handy worksheet I use every single week to help me design children’s sermons. I fully believe that verse by verse exposition of God’s Word is the best way to proclaim God’s Word to kids. What I don’t mean is that I bore kids with a 35 minute exegetical message using a lot of Hebrew and Greek words. What I do mean is that I teach them the Word in an organized way that is seasoned with interactive and cutting edge methods. The worksheet below is the blueprint that gets me to a final product. I hope it’s helpful for you!

Preparing a Lesson for Kids

Also, be sure to get your name in the hat for the 2 Brent Weber DVD’s. I’ll draw names on Wednesday.

I’m keeping it short today!

In a pinch or need to supplement your lesson? Go check out Calvary Chapel’s Curriculum. It is quite a nice collection of Old and New Testament lessons.