Gymboree 365 Activities You and Your Toddler Will Love: Fun Ideas for Your Toddler's Growing Mind! (Paperback)Lesson Folders Keep Nursery Running
Nursery is a place most LDS wards really struggle with. So many people feel it's just a playground and even those who want to do it properly don't know how to do it or get overwhelmed. The new nursery manual is wonderful, but ideas are always helpful. I'm gradually redoing my nursery materials on this website to fit the new program, since I've been called to nursery.
The secret to getting nursery under control is to make it easy. Nursery is a surprisingly demanding calling, requiring a great deal of preparation. A motivated leader can work hard for thirty lessons and then have things run smoothly thereafter if much of the work is already done. Future nursery leaders won't be overwhelmed by the amount of work required to prepare each week.
I'm currently creating a folder for each lesson. In each folder is all the materials to teach the lesson. The visuals are already prepared and all the teachers have to do is make copies if needed, or make the supplies just for their own class if they are things that must be taken home by children.
As an example, the folder for lesson 9, about God and Jesus having a body, contains:
1. A copy of the newsletter for that lesson. I send home a one page newsletter showing what the children learned, which includes things to do at home.
2. The pattern for the finger puppets. I send a copy home with each child to make with his parents.
3. The actual finger puppets already made.
4. The action rhyme printed in large letters and glued to the back of the coloring picture of the boy. This allows a leader who hasn't memorized the rhyme to read it while the children have something to look at. This helps substitutes.
5. The first vision coloring picture separated from the finger puppet pattern, using my crop tool in my word processor. The children will color a copy of this, and then glue it to construction paper which acts as a frame.
6. That same picture on cardstock and put onto a large craft stick. I do this when I show the picture to the children, so I can move it around easily. It's sort of like a stick puppet.
7. An outline of the entire schedule, including what we'll be doing for opening and closing times.
Here is a picture of the lesson 1 packet. The taller cut-out pictures are stick puppets. The one facing backwards is a flannel board picture of the same children.
In addition to this, I'm creating a notebook that has toddler games for closing time. There is a song book with all the songs, including pictures that can be used, and the actions the manual includes, plus some wiggle songs for singing time. The music leader comes in, but if she's absent, we're on our own. All the puppets will be made ahead and put into plastic page protectors. There will be an action rhyme notebook with the rhyme on one side and a picture (usually the coloring page) on the back, as mentioned earlier. There is also a nursery storybook, containing all the stories from the lessons with the picture on the front and the story on the back. There will also be a craft book with ways to turn the coloring pages into simple crafts.
These will all make it very easy for a new or rushed leader to carry out the schedule. Even a substitute can do it, and if the person in charge of one section doesn't show up, the others can pull something from the closet to fill that section.
It takes a lot of time to do this, and it can be done as you go along. Just make a folder each time you prepare a lesson. If someone does something different, ask them to add it to the folder. Eventually, there will be a variety of choices for future leaders.
The Toddlers Busy Book by Trish Kuffner (Author)