BOOK TIME IDEAS
Keep them Puzzled - There are some cases in book time, where some children in your class will not have anything to do. Perhaps they only came with one verse to say and don't want to study anymore, or may be they finished their book and are waiting to get the next one, or perhaps this is their first night and they want to take their Boot Camp booklet home to study it. In all of these cases, you may be left with children who have nothing to do and therefore become a distraction to everyone else. One solution to this problem is to print out some word searches, crossword puzzles, or other kinds of puzzles that relate to your lesson. Though it takes a little extra effort on your part, you may find it very helpful in distracting those who are done saying verses. There are a number of free puzzlemakers online that will make the puzzles for you, you just supply the words. Simply google "free puzzlemakers" to find one, put your puzzle together, print them out and you're done. Here is a link to a puzzlemaker we have used:
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Question Them - Another idea for those who have nothing to do is to give them a very difficult question from the Bible. Questions like: "Zipporah had a very famous husband. What was his name?" or "What was the other name of the Bible character called Didymus?" or "What is the name of the town that is called "City of Palm Trees"?"
or "What was the name of David's first wife?" The goal is for the children have to hunt through their Bible in order to find the answer. Perhaps give a piece of candy to those who find the answer and can show you from their Bibles.
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Make a Competition - For those leaders who are up to the challenge, try learning the verses out of the kid's books and challenging them to try and say more of them than you can. A phrase like "I've got a prize for anyone who can complete more checkpoints than I can tonight" might be a real motivator to get kids to try harder.
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Do you have any special book time ideas that you would you be willing to send us so that we can share them here with other churches? If so, fill in the form below. And thanks for helping us to help others to make their programs better!