Running Sunday Crèche

[TwoTeaTessie]

As of September I am taking over the running of Sunday morning creche. I was wondering if anyone has any good tips, suggestions or themes to follow
Thanks

I volunteer in our church's Sunday club. We usually take the theme of the service and do an age appropriate activity with the children. For example, a couple of weeks ago the minister's address was about ecology so we played a snakes and ladders type game about eco friendly living. Another week I tied my session to a national awareness week and we talked to the children about how those issues appear in their families and drew a poster of the families to hang in the vestry. It can very much depend on the ages of the children involved and how familiar they are with the setting, which can make things a challenge interesting too.

I'm new to the church, and no one wants the job so I've stepped up. I'm having the youngest children so 0- 3/4. Just wondered if there is much other than entertaining to do with them.

I have been landed with chairing ours for the same reason! Tbh, with that age group I'd plan for some sort of craft activity based around the theme and be happy with mildly chaotic crowd control. Good luck!

We don't do organised under 3's these days but when we did they did a super simple craft or some colouring sheets based on the sermon if possible and then just crowd control. It will depend how many helpers you have and how many babies their are what you can do.

Scripture union have a tonne of resources. Ours made a lot of cotton wool sheep, crosses out of lolly sticks and things along those lines. Often the craft would be assembled for the smaller ones who would just scrawl on it then the bigger ones would stick an animal shaped paper to a coloured paper or similar.

The most memorable one was when they were a bit older (3-6) and they made stables at Christmas. Lollipop stick fences, actual hay and random barn animals from the pound shop. They loved it.

Make sure you are familiar with your church's safeguarding policy and see if you can go on safeguarding training if it is available in your area.

We bought into resources once where the leader had a workbook type of thing and the kids all got a different leaflet or magazine each week. It told a different bible story, had various craft activities to do in the session and also for them to take home. There were different ones for each age group. Will see if I can find them online. Not sure what the cost involved would have been, but it was nice for the parents to see what topic had been done and they could re-do the story at home.

The website is www.scriptureunion.org and it's the Bubbles resources.

Our littlest 0-3 (or potty trained) play, stop for squash, a biscuit and a story from the Beginners or Bedtime bible. Then play till pick up

3-4 do similarly but have a simple craft/ colouring sheet that follows their story - Play through the bible is a lovely resource. I think theme wise this group loosely follow the rest of Sunday club if it translates to their age group

Thank you so much, will have a chat and see if there is some money to invest in things

Bible story (from a simple children's bible eg. The toddler bible or lion first bible) and simple action song and a quick prayer.
Craft/creative activity on the theme of the bible story.
Free play toys
Don't worry too much if kids with to play rather than listen to story, but set it up so they are expected to join in, and then encourage them and make it exciting so they want to join in.
Eg. Story of the good Shepherd. Read story. Send them to look for the toy sheep you have hidden in the room. Craft: Stick cotton wool onto a picture of a sheep, which has words such as 'Jesus cares for us' on it.

The hardest thing with this age is trying to avoid using written words.

What age to your crèche children go up to? Ours is 2.5 years. We just provide baby/toddler toys. We don't do any teaching at this age.

We have a crèche team but parents are welcome to stay and we have a live audio/video feed of the service.