How to Safely Divide Your Kidmin Preschool Rooms
So, you have a bunch of kids in your kidmin under the age of five. How do you divide them up safely, securely, and happily? By age? Birthday? Ability? The third Sunday in October?
Dividing these kids can seem arbitrary, and if you like things in nice, neat little boxes like I do, the third Sunday in October doesn’t sound all that bad.
However, when making this decision there are several factors to consider. Some of which I’ll cover in this post and then provide my best case scenario based on those factors.
1. How many rooms?
This seems obvious, but if you’ve seen one church, you’ve seen one church. Being in kidmin for as long as I have, I’ve seen a lot of nurseries and no two are set up the same. Some have one room for infants to five year olds and some have multiple rooms for each age.
You can have a vision for three or four rooms to accommodate the number of kids and their abilities, but if you only have one room allocated for your youngest children, you have a large hill to climb before you get there.
For most churches (megachurches excluded) up to four rooms for preschool and nursery is more than sufficient. But if you don’t have the space for that, then you need at least two. One for the youngest infants and another for the ones who can run. Too many accidents can happen with just one infant and five 3-year-olds.
Also, for many young moms with their first child, safety is their most important concern. They’re not going to want to drop off their 3-month-old in the group of giant 4-year-olds no matter how much you assure them it’s going to be ok.
In the churches where I served, and we only had space for one room, we divided the room with baby gates to keep the big ones away from the little ones. It wasn’t ideal, but we worked with what we had.
2. How many kids?
Going from a church of 1500 to 100 was a head-spinning experience. My entire kidmin was almost double the average attendance of the 100 person church. I went from having five to six kids per preschool room to less than three in total. Now, this was a sign that the church was in decline. But the reality is that I didn’t need multiple rooms because there just weren’t enough kids.
Having a few kids is on one end of the spectrum, but if you’re asking this question, most likely you’re on the other end. You’re probably dealing with more kids than your current structure can handle.
Either way, you need to know the average attendance and basic demographics of each of your environments. I talk about why here. Once you have that information, you can decide if you need more rooms or more workers. You can dream of having five rooms split evenly amongst the age groups, but if you have twenty 4-year-olds and two 6-month-olds you need to allocate your rooms differently.
Depending on the size of your room, you may need two or more rooms for one age group and only half a room for another. It all depends on your kidmin’s demographics, and it changes every year. Because kids do this weird thing where they get older every year.
Even if you find the perfect structure this month, you’re probably going to have to adjust again next year, especially if there’s a baby boom. Knowing your numbers helps you be prepared for what’s coming.
3. How many Volunteers?
This may be the most important question of all. If you don’t have enough volunteers, it doesn’t matter how many rooms or kids you have. You can only take as many as you can. I talk about appropriate room ratios in this post. But the baseline needs to be rule of two especially for preschool and nursery.
If you have just one worker with as few as two kids, what happens when they need to change a diaper and the other kid gets into mischief? You can’t leave that baby on the changing table unattended, but you need to stop the other kid from hurting themselves. This is why you need two. Remember, safety first.
I’m never a fan of requiring parents to serve, and I hate to shut down rooms because you don’t have enough volunteers. So, I suggest you as the leader actively recruit more volunteers. More than you need. Never. Stop. Recruiting.
As you do, don’t lead with desperation. Rather lead with vision. Talk to potential volunteers about how they can be the first people to share the love of Jesus with a little one. They get to be on the ground floor to teaching kids about their heavenly father. I give more advice on how to recruit and even a script for nursery here.
4. How to Divide Your Preschool Rooms
Let’s say you have all these questions answered. How do you separate kids in Preschool and Nursery? In elementary, it’s an easy answer. By grade. But for this age group, I’ve found that it’s a little more nuanced.
I suggest that your rooms are divided by ability. Kids at this age are constantly changing, and for them, age is just a number. Some kids will be walking by six months and others not until they’re two. Some kids are potty trained by eighteen months and others not until they’re three. Each one of these milestones requires a different span of care. So, your rooms should reflect that.
With this in mind, here’s how I suggest you divide your groups.
Infant to Crawler
Walkers, not potty trained
Preschool and Kindergarten
But that’s just three rooms. If you have the ability to add more, then I suggest you separate infants and crawlers and preschoolers and kindergartners.
As each kid masters those milestones they move to the next room. So, there isn’t one specific move up day, and it doesn’t necessarily line up with their birthdays. The key is to have an ongoing conversation with the parents and the workers in their room to decide what’s best for the kid. Just because their baby went potty one time last week doesn’t mean they’re ready to move up. They may need a few more weeks before they’re actually ready. And that’s ok. We’re not in a rush.
Side note: those Kindergartners can move up to Elementary at your next move up Sunday or my personal favorite half-way through the school year.
Because every church is different, I can’t prescribe exactly what you should do without seeing your answers to these questions. Don’t be afraid to experiment and find out what works best for you and your context.
Once you find a structure that works, don’t sit on your laurels. Those kids grow fast. A perfect structure from two years ago, may not serve you well now. Keep an eye on your room ratios and adjust as needed. Then you’ll have a safe, secure, and happy environment for your smallest members as they learn about their savior
