A TYPICAL 5 WEEK ROTATION SCHEDULE IN A SMALL SUNDAY SCHOOL

Neil MacQueen writes:
This schedule comes from a small church where I averaged 8 kids every Sunday the first year, 5 in the younger and 3 in the older, and 10 kids the following year split 6 and 4 per class/workshop. For most story rotations, we were able to show the same video to both groups together on week one because the video worked for both age groups.  It's a good example of how the particular RESOURCE you want to use might affect your schedule and combinine or separating ages.   

You can substitute another workshop of your preference for any other workshop in the story rotation. For example, we often switched cooking with games --depending on which activity we were more excited about for that story.

We used our church kitchen for the Cooking Workshop. One room doubled our Art and Drama workshops --we switched the room around. That same room had an overhead LCD projector so we could use it as the Video Workshop to open up each four or five week Rotation. The Computers were in a nice open classrroom space that we also used for our Game Workshop when scheduled.

A Note about the Cooking Workshop, ...combining then splitting in a Workshop.

Cooking Workshops are easier to pull-off with smaller groups than larger ones. This makes them a natural regular workshop in small churches, because even most small churches have kitchens. And it tends to be easier to combine age groups into one group for Cooking than it is for computer or drama, for example, because of the medium of food prep is less age specific. You can also have two groups share the kitchen stove or oven or prep space on a given Sunday --then let them split into different discussion rooms based on age.  It just depended on who we had and what we wanted to accomplish.

It's hard to combine for Games if the game requires coordination (which the older kids will dominate at).  It's also hard to combine grades for dramas if you need to read a script. Depends on the script and lesson plan.

A FOUR WEEK ROTATION with only two grade groups:

Neil continues:
If we were using one video that was for younger, and a different video for our older kids, then we would need to schedule two different Video Workshops.  If the computer software didn't work for the younger kids, we might do a "games" or "drama" lesson for them instead of computer. (See this in the schedule below.)   This kind of flexibilty was not only necessary, it allowed us to pick certain resources for older kids that we wouldn't otherwise be able to use with all the kids.

If we were only doing a FOUR WEEK Rotation, we might CUT the Drama Workshop for the older kids and send BOTH classes to the Cooking Workshop in the church kitchen on Week 4.  It depends on the lesson ideas you have, your kids and your space.

Here's what those above ideas would sometimes look like in our schedule:

Of course, you can substitute in any other workshop for those listed in the examples.  Science for Drama, Games for Computer, etc.

Rotation Modelers love this kind of freedom to adapt to available space, resources, age ranges, and workshops ideas.

You'll find more "Small Sunday School" links and advice in a related topic: Small and/or Broadly Graded Sunday School, "One Room," Traditional and Rotation Model