Now, Sunday values and Sunday fun

80% of the brain develops by age 3. The social, intellectual, and spiritual ways you're pouring into young kids sets an incredibly important foundation.

We are all aware of the importance of our younger age-groups in our kidmin programs. In fact, many churches provide a special program for the 2-3 year-olds.  Children's Ministry Magazine also notes this importance with the above quote. Information from educational sources highlights a similar perspective. The crucial formative years are those early years 2-4. 

Investing in the education of 3 & 4 year-olds returns 9 times the investment.  Source- J.Oppenheim & T.Macgregor

But it's often difficult to find the right program for those little ones. Their short attention span and constant action and movement requires a very different style of program with short teaching segments and lots of activities to reinforce the basic concepts and Bible points... enter VeggieTales Sunday School lessons.

My own children grew up with VeggieTales dvds, stories and songs. It's interesting now to watch my son singing the 'Where is my hairbrush song' to his little daughter and seeing her face light up with delight. 

VeggieTales connects with kids and families
Over the years, we've regularly presented the Veggietales movie events as new VeggieTales dvds were released. We've found that families from  the community that are unconnected with the church will attend fun events like these and we've been delighted at the opportunity to connect with these families.

VeggieTales Sunday School lessons
So... I'm very interested to see the release of VeggieTales Sunday School lessons for ages 3-8. Each series is a 4-week program with each lesson reinforcing a basic Bible concept.

---

What's included?
You’ll get a teacher guide to lead you through each lesson and a DVD with the video clips and coloring pages you’ll need. Each lesson includes:

• Easy-to-follow schedule for the lesson
• Exciting introduction
• Fun VeggieTales video clips
• Engaging experiences that tie in to the video
• Interactive coloring page
• Closing that wraps up the lesson and encourages kids to come back for more

---

Yes... it looks interesting, and I'll have to check it out further. I'm not too excited about an interactive colouring page. (Colouring pages are little more than 'busy activities' for me. I think there are better ways to reinforce the lesson but maybe those are included as the extra experiences.)
I'm ordering a lesson program to find out and evaluate it and I'll let you know.

If you're interested in these programs yourself, you can find them here.