Zoomin’ through Sunday School | Scheduling Your Online Sunday School

We’ve recently found ourselves in uncharted territories. The pandemic caused us to rethink how we do Sunday school to reach our students when we are not able to be present with them. Many of us turned to Zoom for online Sunday school to make that happen. How can you teach effectively through Zoom?

It’s important before creating a scheduled to determine the format you will use. We assigned a different part of the lesson to each teacher. We also chose to meet on a weeknight so we did not interfere with Sunday services.

Scheduling Your Online Sunday School

1. Open with an icebreaker activity. With our Zoom classes, we did not do an icebreaker that connected with the lesson. Instead it was simply a get-to-know-you activity or an activity that would allow students to move around or interact. (You can do an activity that goes with the lesson, but our kids were missing each other, so we chose to make the icebreaker an opportunity for them to get to visit with each other.) Do a scavenger hunt. Play Pictionary, Simon Says, or Would You Rather. Create a trivia game or the get-to-know-you activity using Kahoot. Do a STEM activity or Minute-to-Win-It game using materials most kids have on hand. Spend five to ten minutes on this activity.
2. Engage the students with a high-energy praise song to get more wiggles out.
3. Make the Bible lesson come alive. You can still make the Bible lesson come alive even on Zoom.
   

   Have fun as you connect your class with Jesus through Zoom.

   Dress up as the character. Use props. Show a video clip. Create a PowerPoint presentation. Be dramatic. Have your students interact with the lesson. Use puppets. Make characters out of Play-Doh, potatoes, bananas, and so on. Keep your students engaged and keep the lesson to less than ten minutes.

4. Review the lesson. Ask questions. Do review games. Play Tic-Tac-Toe. Kahoot, Quizlet, and Jeopardy Labs are all great places to create online review games. Have students draw a picture of the lesson or use materials to recreate a portion of the lesson. Incorporate the activity paper.
5. Pray. Because we were missing our weekly kids’ prayer training class, we incorporated different ways of praying into our Zoom Sunday school. We found different prayer tools online that were easy for the students to do at home and taught them how to pray using those tools. We took prayer requests. We encouraged students to lead in prayer. We shared praise reports.
6. Do a memory verse activity. We chose easy Bible verses for them to learn in just a couple of minutes and did aerobics or used different voices to say the verse. You can incorporate other methods as well, but we chose to keep it short and simple.
7. End with a prize drawing each week. We gave away gift cards, board games, crafts, science sets, and more. Sometimes the kids asked to play a game at this point, and we indulged.

Final Recommendations

Create guidelines. For the safety of kids, we required approval to join the group. We also requested that the video screen be on. During certain parts of the class, we required everyone to be muted. We asked everyone to be kind and courteous. We encouraged participation.

Keep it simple and to the point. Kids have a lot competing for their attention when they are at home. Keep things moving and keep the activities short. We typically planned for about a 40-minute session.

Show the kids love. Greet each of them with a smile. Recognize them. Ask about their week. The interaction may involve a different method, but it will still let your students know you care about them.

Have fun as you connect your class with Jesus through Zoom.

Bio: Mandi McKibben graduated from Gateway College of Evangelism with a bachelor’s in Christian Education. She teaches high school at New Life Academy and is a field editor for Word Aflame curriculum. In her spare time she serves as the Illinois district beginners’ level Bible quiz master, volunteers for a local food pantry, and serves as Sunday School coordinator for NLSL-Bridgeton and children’s church leader at NLSL-Jennings.

Resources and Links

Apostolic Children’s Curriculum