Using Video Based Curriculum for Children's Church

[Suzie McCord]

If you read my profile, you'd see that I am a Children's Director for a church that has 3 campus and 13 service per week - all of which have classes for children!! So, knowing these tidbits, you can see why I've chosen to use video based curriculum for consistency in teaching and ease of use for volunteers. We began using Kidmo in 2004 and have been using Empowering Kids for the past 2 years. We have found Empowering Kids Curriculum to be perfect for us because preschool - elementary aged kids are learning the same content at the same time, with a parent guide and weekly takehomes for review. Unfortunately, we have used all of the Empowering Kids Curriculum. Does anyone know of any other video based curriculum that would suit our needs? I'm excited to see the upcoming HillsongKidsBig curriculum; however, they're only promising 12 weeks of curriculum with no promises of future modules. Any guidance would be appreciated.

[Jason Douglass]

Hey I know Life Church gives their stuff away..

If you know how to edit videos you could make it your own...

Website: Life Church

Jason

[Tim Vance]

Check out Elevatekids.com This is the curriculum from Fellowship Church in Texas. While the Elevate and Elevate Jr. are available with similar themes, they are actually studying different subjects at time (unlike Empowering Kids). Steven Dilla (on this site) is from there and can tell you all about Elevate, I'm sure. I haven't used Elevate, just started using video curriculum this summer with Empowering Kids, but I did preview it and might have chosen it except that I knew our church was going to do a church-wide study which would correlate perfectly with one of Empowering Kids' series. I'll probably use some Elevate in the coming Spring.

[Suzie McCord]

Thank you both! Following your advice, I've just previewed the elevate curriculum and LifeChurch videos and either choice is a viable option for me. I appreciate the guidance.

To any one else who may know of even more video curriculum out there - Keep the great ideas coming!

[Kathy King]

We've used Kidmo with our elementary kids but are now using Elevate because the Kidmo folks quit producing new stuff. My leaders like the Elevate series, but it does require a little more planning than the Kidmo. It's more interactive - but gives lots of choices for application activities. Since we only have an hour, we usually only have time for one or two of the activities.

[Dan Snook]

Suzie,

Brian Dollar's curriculum is very easy to use, but it does not extend down into the preschool. It does have the take home pages though. Brian keeps things very inexpensive too, which is extremely helpful! It is heavy on the videos, but still requires a teacher to communicate the teaching points.

[Matt Melton]

Shame on you Tim.

[Suzie McCord]

Hmmm... now that I've got the scoop on you Matt, you need to turn the screws on Craig. We are addicts and need a fix. So, when is Parables being released????? I keep trying to stretch those Empowering Kids lessons out. I plan on coming back, even if I take a year off. I need to give you guys time to build up some new stuff.

[Joe McAlpine]

Elevate, Kidmo, and empowering kids, in my opinion are the best ever. Especially Elevate because it breaks up the service between video and teaching.

[Sandy Rodery]

Suzie,
We are just opening our first off campus sight. I do not have any ideas for you... but wanted to say THANKS for the info. I got from this discussion! I have been trying to help with what curriculum to use for ours. I thought Kidmo might work, but glad to get all the other advice.
Thanks!
Sandy

[Matt Melton]

Parables Elementary ONLY is projected to be released mid-October. It's hard to produces these so fast since I"m the only video editor here. I love our stuff and this series is going to be a good one. I'm just now finishing up Elementary and going to be working on the Preschool edition next week hopefully.