Posted in God Speaks

For the past several weeks, the kids have joined us (adults) in church, for the main service, rather than going to their perceptive children’s classrooms.  It all started with an AWANA assignment to attend a "teaching service" and now the kids are coming with us to our (adult) service every week.  I don’t mind because I have always dreamed of having my entire family sitting together in services, worshiping together and just plain being a family praising G-d… together.  We are blessed to have a pastor who is very gifted in teaching the word and my kids love listening to him, however, their attention span starts to waver so this is what we did today. 

To combat the wiggles and squirming in service, and for me to feel comfortable that they are listening and learning from a more adult service, we put together these Sermon Notebooks for my children to take notes in.  My youngest is still at a coloring book stage and often just goes to his kid’s service instead but the older two have really taken an interest in the adult service.  My middle son loves to draw so in his notebook I put an area that he can draw a small picture of what the service is about and a place to write a narration of what he learned with some questions for after the service.  For my older son, I wanted him to think a bit more about what he is hearing and learn to start taking notes.  I also want him to begin to start applying the teaching to his life so he has a few probing questions that he has to answer and discuss.  Both notebooks reflect a Cornell style of note taking:

Sermon Notes with picture area

Sermon Notes (5th grade and up) 

I let the boys decorate the fronts of them with stickers and a favorite verse.  They were super easy to make with a hole punch but you can just print off the pages and take them to Kinko’s just as easy.  I’m hoping this will keep them interested in the service and keep them coming for more.  Silly me!  I should have made one for me – (heavy sigh) one more thing to add to the “to do” list.