Slight Deversion

My day got away from me today and so I've not gotten to session #3 yet! Stay tuned - maybe tomorrow I'll get 2 posts up?

I did want to share a couple of neat resources I've just discovered. If you remember, I have become our church's nursery coordinator. At first I was pretty busy just getting everything up and running... hopefully smoothly! Now I've had a bit of time to digest and get through the basics, so I decided to research some ways we can really make this a MINISTRY to our youngest little members!

Tippy Towers and Boo Blankets; Bible Play for Tiny Tots
What a fun book with age appropriate activities, poems, songs, and games to play with children ages 0-6. There aren't any huge lessons TAUGHT, but you're reinforcing simple truths in a fun manner. I've already tweaked about 6 of these ideas for our little Sleepers and Creepers.

Nursery Smart Pages
What a resource! This book has it all - reproducibles, lessons, forms, clipart, letters, training, policies, everything you need! I'm really hoping we can purchase the correlating posters and cards for our nursery.

Pray & Play Bible for Young Children
A little Bible story, pages of questions, crafts, games, songs... Rinse... Repeat! What a great book for a parent of young children looking for a way to use "Bible Story" time more thoroughly.

These books, along with a few other toddler Bible Story books I've looked through, all came to me via our public library. That's right - not a church library, not a Christian school library, but our public library. I've found that if I ask, they will provide! What a blessing to know that these great resources are available to me for free (well, I don't want to think about my taxes!). I'd encourage you to check our your local library for these, as well as other great Christian resources. If they don't have the book - ask - see what happens!

Nursery Ministry

How many of you work in your church nurseries?

How many of you use your church nurseries?

Before Bekah was born I knew that the nursery existed, that they needed helpful volunteers, and that it was a nice service to offer. After Bekah was born my views have changed (or perhaps I'm just more enlightened?!).

You see, Mike and I both play in the orchestra each Sunday morning. I'm one of a very small pool of pianists and Mike is the only drummer. So, we really need to play most, if not every, week. This makes the nursery very important to us!

After a few months of frustration over lack of coordination, lack of volunteers, and too many "it's not my problem if there's no one to help in the nursery even if you NEED it and I WANT it" attitudes, I decided to sign up as the nursery coordinator.

The last week I've spent countless hours re-working the manuals, policies, and forms. Yesterday I started visiting with my service team leaders and observing the nursery's runnings during the service. I'm excited to serve in this new way - hopefully to help move our nursery from "babysitting" to ministry! Hopefully to help it not become just a little germ pool but instead a happy and encouraging place for our little children.