We have started offering a very light breakfast before Sunday School starts.

 

It has encouraged kids and workers to arrive early and spend some fellowship time together. We've found that the parents DO try to make this, and if they are late anyway, they are just in time for class to begin (sneaky huh?).

 

Maybe this would give your kids (and early arriving parents) a place to land and connect before classtime. 

Abingdon Press has a book titled "Arrival Activities from A-Z: Things to Do When the First Child Arrives", by Daphna Flegal and Peg Augustine. 

It has puzzles and activity sheets.

 

Another suggestion if you have REGULAR early arrivers: create an "early arriver welcome center."

 

Many of our children have children's choir practice 15 minutes before the start of class. For the ones who are not in the choir, I try to provide our leaders with some activities: puzzles, word searches, coloring pages, etc.based on the unit theme for the early arrivals. Also the children help the leader set up the room - names tags, collection, supplies, etc. Not brilliant ideas but it seems to help.

We adapted this idea from a church in California:

We do not let children into our classroom space until the adults are in place (which is hopefully 15 minutes before official start time). But we also know that having UNSTRUCTURED time can lead to kids going out of control and running loose, ...which affects the beginning of classes in a negative way when we do finally corral them.

 

So.... we have the children sit with their shepherd and do what we call "Buckets of Fun" time.

The buckets are actually shoebox or bigger Rubbermaid-type storage containers with games, legos, geomags (most popular these days), etc. in them. As preparation for class each week, the Shepherd gets one or two "buckets" off of the shelf in the Children's Ministry closet (their children and other early arrivers get to help choose). When it is time to begin, someone blinks the lights and all the stuff is dumped into the "bucket" and everyone is ready. So you can't play long involved games like Monopoly. And you want to encouraged relaxed non-competitive playing that allows latecomers to add in. (Pick up sticks, Jenga, Kerplunk are games that work well.)

Also during this time, the Shepherd can have informal "how was your week?" and "how did the game/performance go?" type conversations.

 

We've educated our shepherds to understand this THIS TIME is very valuable shepherding time.

We have recently started an activity that has kids coming early just to do!

We have about 8 - 10 games (most are for 2) set up for the kids. They know that these games stay out from 9 - 9:30 (we start at 9:30) and they are then covered by a tarp at 9:30.. in time for our opening.

Games include: basketball shoot with fingers, checkers, bowling (plastic), don't break the ice etc. This is a great time to just "talk" with the kids about their week in an environment that they are comfortable. We started this after visiting another church in our area.. It's been a big hit!

"CHILDREN ARRIVING LATE"

 

Excerpts from previous posts:

 

"ONE or TWO Children Arriving Late"

 

Karen wrote:

No matter what we say, we always have a few kids showing up 5, 10, 15 minutes late to class. I used to sweat it, until one of the parents told me "we're late for everything." It's just how they roll through life. 

 

The child of those parents was MORTIFIED by walking in late. And that's when I realized we needed to make sure THE CHILD didn't feel singled out or LEFT out, otherwise, their embarrassment could eventually turn into "I don't want to come."

 

For that particular child, I found that they responded positively when we made a big "welcoming" deal about them (finally) arriving. Another child might not have appreciated the attention, so be careful. 

 

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"Lots of kids arriving late"  --a lesson plan solution

 

Ginny wrote:

 

In our church, late arriving kids had more to do with our early Sunday School time than parents bad habits. We started at 8:30 am!  And I'd say about 1/3 of our kids would show up at 8:40, especially in the winter, --no matter how much we encouraged the parents to arrive on time.

 

I tried talking to the parents to no avail. Then I started adjusting my lessons to make sure we did an OPENING ACTIVITY related to our topic, but not essential to the lesson, so that late arrivers didn't miss to much.

 

For example, in Art, we would do a quick drawing or clay-formation project about how they felt about a certain subject/problem/idea ...which was related to the verse for the day.

 

In Drama, I might do a quick skit about the subject for the day before going into the study.

 

In our computer lab, we'd preview the software for the first 5 minutes to learn how it worked, or take a quiz about something we taught them earlier in the year.

 

In Bible Gameland, we would play a quick memory game about the PREVIOUS rotation's lesson content to refresh their memory.

 

In Video, we often had to start ON-TIME, so I would make sure we have an extra couple bags of popcorn and seating NEAR THE DOOR so that late arrivers wouldn't interrupt the video and class. I would also position myself near the door to quiet people down as they arrived.