Every few weeks, I have the pleasure of leading Children’s Church during our worship service.
After the children’s sermon, the younger kids follow the cross to the education wing and we sing songs, play instruments, do a theme verse, and review a Bible story. It is a great learning experience for the children and allows them to express themselves rather than sitting quietly through the entire worship service.
While Children’s Church is primarily designed for the children, it also benefits the parents by allowing them to focus on the message and prayer portions of the worship service during this time.
As I was leading the session today, I was thinking about the opportunities we have every day to help children learn to read and/or improve their reading skills.
Rather than reading the Bible story myself, I typically ask the children to take turns reading passages. I had not really thought about this in terms of literacy benefits before. However, giving each child an opportunity to read and hear other children reading seems to be excellent exposure for the kids. Most of the time they are excited to read and stay much more engaged with the story as well.
As we were reading the story today, I was thinking about how these small events can really add up and it reminded me that we should be looking for more of these opportunities. Whether it is reading the grocery list back to you, finding words on street signs, playing word games in the car, or actually sitting down to read; they all have a positive influence on a child’s literacy.
What creative activities do you use to engage children in reading and learning?
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One of the games my grandchildren and I play, as we walk to the park, is an alphabet game. We look on signs, cars buildings etc. to see if we can find all the words to finish the alphabet before we get to the park. It is very difficult to find words beginning with Q,U,V,X and Z in our small town. But we have fun and are challenged to do so.