Sunday school kickoff ideas add excitement to your children’s ministry launch. Begin a winning season of learning and growing with practical tips from kidmin leaders and volunteers!
A new school year is kicking back into gear. If you’re a children’s ministry director, you need to recruit, train, and organize your team. Plus, you need to get everyone excited about all that God will do in children’s lives this year. If you’re a teacher or small-group leader, you need to organize and decorate your space before children arrive. So much to do, so little time…
And so many ideas! We’ve collected 15 reader-tested Sunday school kickoff ideas. They’ll help you start a phenomenally faith-enriching year for children and families. You’ll find everything from organizing crafts to making creative meeting reminders to staging a carnival for families. Pro Tip: Fall Festivals are a blast for children’s ministry or Sunday school kickoff.
So don’t let this school year sneak up on you. Get in gear so you can kick off a great fall programming season!
15 Sunday School Kickoff Ideas for Fall
1. Revamped Roll Call
Accurate attendance and follow-up can be difficult for teachers with all they have to do during class time. So we solved this problem by putting one person in charge of attendance for each service. This person takes a clipboard with attendance lists for each class. The helper goes to each room to take attendance and fill out visitor information cards for new children.
After all the attendance is taken, the helper checks the list for kids who’ve been absent for more than one week in a row. Then the helper addresses and stamps a postcard for each absent child and gives it to the appropriate teacher at the end of the service. Teachers write personal notes to the missing children and mail the cards that week. This has worked tremendously well and has been a real improvement in our organization.
Amy McMunn
Lambertville, Michigan
2. Photo Posters
Why decorate with store-bought posters when you can make your own that’ll thrill children?
Simply take color or black and white photos of the children in your class. It’s helpful to take these outdoors where the light is good. In your photos, use props such as park benches, playground slides, or swings. Include two or three children in each photo.
After developing your photos, choose a few to enlarge. You can have photos blown up to poster size at copy shops or at kiosks in stores such as Wal-Mart. To help your posters last, laminate them, affix them to foam core with spray adhesive, or frame them.
Then hang these posters in your classroom, hallway, or another visible place in your building. Posters of your children will create a sense of belonging for the children, parents, and teachers. These posters will also foster self-esteem, look great, and create smiles.
Sarah Hockenbrocht
Fort Worth, Texas
3. Resource Closet
Our church members have been very generous in offering craft items, such as paper towel rolls, fabric remnants, and egg cartons, to use with the children. So we needed a place to store and organize all the stuff to maximize its usefulness.
We cleaned out and painted an unused room, put in plastic shelving, and bought plastic baskets from a dollar store. We organized the resources so like items were together. Then we let our teachers and volunteers know about the room. This has been quite useful all year—and especially at vacation Bible school time. Getting organized is the perfect kickoff idea for fall!
Annie Yelton
Charlotte, North Carolina
4. Sunday School Kickoff Ideas: Information Binder
To help me get to know kids better, I’ve created a class notebook.
First of all, I help each first-grade girl fill out a get-to-know-you sheet with questions about her address, phone, family, interests, and more. I put all these forms in a three-ring binder.
Behind each girl’s information sheet, I put a few sheets of lined paper to record when I call or send notes or cards to the child. I try to write or call each girl at least every other week. When I send a note, I send along the week’s memory verse. I also tell something fun we’ll be doing the following week in class. Or I comment on something the girl told me in class or on an upcoming event in her life. This makes the girls feel very special.
In my binder, I also keep my class’s attendance record, notepads in fun colors, stickers to put on the outside of envelopes, and bookmarks to surprise the girls.
Amy Szlapak
Columbus, Ohio
5. Mystery Person
Our children’s church averages 40 to 45 children each week, but many individuals don’t attend every week. To encourage a family feeling even though kids are in and out, we feature a Mystery Person each Sunday.
The kids each fill out Mystery Person forms that tell us their favorite colors, foods, school subjects, and more. Then each week, we choose a form of a child who’s present that day. As we read the clues one by one, the kids try to guess who the Mystery Person is.
We review the rules each week:
- No saying “yuck!” to the Mystery Person’s favorites.
- Only one guess per child.
- When you realize you’re the Mystery Person, keep cool. Even guess somebody else.
- Everyone gets a piece of candy, and the Mystery Person and the one who identifies the Mystery Person each get two pieces.
Our children look forward to this every week. We all benefit from getting to know each other better, and we’ve found out some amazing things about our children. We’ve even asked our senior pastor and the children of our missionaries to fill out forms for us. That way we can feature each of them as our Mystery Person at different times.
Debbie Rowley
Santa Ana, California
