Raising Up the Next Generation: VOUS Kids Curriculum

Sophie Townsend

September 22, 2022
5 min read

We believe children are real people who can have a real encounter with a real God.

Sophie Townsend

At VOUS Kids, our mission is to develop leaders who are passionately in love with Jesus. Each week, future world-changers grow more in love with God and his house through worship, interactive lessons, and of course, fun!

We believe children are real people who can have a real encounter with a real God. Because of this, we never want our kids ministry to be an afterthought. We built our kids ministry intentionally, considering everything from content and curriculum to structure and flow.

So what does a Sunday service look like for a VOUS Kid? We divide them into different age groups so their experiences are developmentally appropriate. Let’s dive a little deeper into each one.

DREAMERS

At VOUS, we always say that it’s not babysitting, it’s leadership development. These future leaders can join Dreamers as early as six months old and stay in this group until they reach 24 months.

We keep their Sunday experience simple, but that does not mean it’s any less significant. From a spiritual development standpoint, we worship with them, have our servant leaders pray over each child, and speak Biblical affirmations over them. It is never too early to start teaching them that God has a plan for them and has chosen them for a purpose. To encourage physical development, we include a time of structured activities designed to cover the basics of early childhood development and fine motor skills.

HEROES

Our Heroes are the 2-4 year olds in our church. In addition to fun activities, more time is devoted to a lesson and worship — we host a full service in a way that keeps them focused and excited. We start service by introducing our VOUS Kids values. This helps instill development and guide positive behavior (you can check out this article for more on our VOUS Kids values).

For Heroes, we like to use videos from Listener Kids and Yancy for worship. The kids love the engaging videos and songs designed for their age. After worship, we show a Bible lesson video from Orange curriculum (more on our curriculum later).

Before jumping into Kids Crews, we break for snack time (priorities, right?). Heroes join a servant leader who leads them in practicing their memory verse before doing an activity together. We end our Heroes service with fun games that correlate to the main lesson while waiting for parent pick up.

LEGENDS

Legends encompasses our elementary group, from 5-11 years old. This service is structured a little differently, beginning with social time. We play two games that get the kids hyped and ready for what they will learn.

Our service flow mirrors much of our “big church” service. It starts with a welcome moment where we teach our VOUS values, prep them for the day, and share the memory verse. Worship leaders and dancers come onstage for worship before we pause to teach about generosity and celebrate our first-time guest VIPs. From there, Legends watch a Bible story video from Orange and then have a speaker come on stage for an interactive main message. We close the service with a salvation call.

Because Legends covers a wide age range, we split our Kids Crews into three age groups: 5-6 years, 7-8 years, and 9-11 years. They start with an icebreaker, practice their memory verse, do a Bible story activity, honor each other, and finish with prayer requests and praise reports.

When it comes to building out our curriculum, we use content developed by Orange; we feel it works excellently for the season our ministry is in. We want a Biblically sound and engaging curriculum for our VOUS Kids — our main goal is to get them excited to learn about Jesus and to carry what they’ve learned with them wherever they go.

Ultimately, choosing a curriculum is about finding what aligns with your values and works best in your ministry.  

We hope this equips and encourages you. You can check out our website for more resources. We’re grateful to be on the journey with you.

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