Have you ever asked your kids what kids they admire most. Most of the time they will tell you the name of a kid who is a few years older than they are. Once I started finding this to be a trend it caused me to rethink how I design things for uptown wether it’s a flier or print piece, is use this simple equation.
- When creating for Pre-school think elementry
- When creating for elementary think pre-teen
- When creating for pre-teen think jr. high
A few of my team leaders in our 5th,6th and 7th grade environments started telling me how our kids were not engaging with the 252basics lesson plans created for 5th and 6th graders. I observed a few times and had to agree. We started thinking through ways we could fix our problem everything from finding new curriculum to writing our own. We finely came to the conclusion that we should try and use XP3 which is the Orange groups Jr. High and High School Curriculum.
To kick off this new idea I preached to our 5th and 6th graders for a month straight. I was amazed how much better they connected to the content.
How do we tweak XP3 for 5th and 6th grade? We don’t have to tweak that much.
1. We stay clear of sex and dating series and references.
2. We shorten the message from 40min to 20min this is the most difficult part
3. We add an object lesson to connect the information to a physical object in their world.
That’s pretty much it. We don’t tweak it much but those small changes make a huge difference.
Way to go Sam. We've been using Simply Youth Ministry stuff and some other student curriculums and condensing them.
It's really tough.
I implore Preteen Ministry Peeps to take those last three points to heart! They are killer advice. Tough to do, but incredible results.
JC you should look at XP3 we don't have to change it much because they have a Sr. High and a Jr. High option. We use the Jr. High option with a few teaks. Thanks for the comment.
yeah it continues to be on our radar because of their small group stuff. I will post before the end of the year how we are using LIVE curriculum for our large group.
Thanks for all you do!
I love this idea. I'm moving into the realm of preteen ministry next week and have a lot of planning and dreaming to do. I want to learn more about this!
So nearly three months later are you still doing it? And are you happy? Are the kids connecting?