Classroom Management Starts with Lesson Prep

Ever had a class of squirrely, disengaged kids? Engaged kids during lesson time starts with your prep. In this episode, Amber teaches you to S.M.I.L.E. and gives practical tips and tricks to help you engage kids better, thus reducing the squirrelyness. 

Resources Mentioned in the Episode:

Classroom Management Live Training in the Family Ministry Community Group on 4/21/2026 - https://www.facebook.com/groups/familyministrycommunity

Intentional Children's Ministry 

Children's Ministry Coaching: https://familyministry.org/childrens-ministry-coaching/ 

Transcript

Amber Pike (00:11.734)
Welcome back to the Kidmin huddle. Have you ever had one of those Sundays where the kids are so incredibly squirrely? Yes, that is for sure a word and it's easy to spell. But they're so squirrely and kids aren't listening, they're bouncing off the walls, maybe actually like literally bouncing off the walls. And you leave just feeling a little defeated. No, you've never had one of those. We never do, right? Our kids, kids are kids and they totally.

Always 100 % of the time sit quietly as good little listeners, right? No, okay. So I don't care how long you've been serving you have had one of these days if you've been serving a couple weeks or a couple decades you have had some of these days because kids are kids there are times when they are going to be squarely even the most Well-behaved child is gonna have a time where they are just Not feeling it right some people blame it on the full moon some people blame candy

Some people think it's a seasonal thing or whatever. Kids are gonna have times when they are just a little extra squirrely. I have had many of those days. I have had days where I have left crying, where other kids have been crying. It happens. And we as ministry leaders who have the goal of helping disciple boys and girls, of giving them this firm foundation built on the word.

where they are walking with Christ as lifelong disciples, we need to be doing our best to help eliminate some of this squirreliness because imagine it this way. When one kid is super, super chatty and not listening, do you know what that happens to the other kids? They're not able to listen. This is one of the reasons why I am so against movies and children's ministry. I don't show clips longer than like five minutes max. And those are very, very, very occasional.

Because what happens when you turn the lights off in a group of kids? They start chatting, right? Or they wiggle in their seats. I teach multi-age, so I've got my littles in there with my bigs, and littles just by nature are a little more squirrely. They can't sit still as long, or they want to talk, and they want to tell you something. When this is happening, someone else is not able to learn. It also is a monkey see, monkey do situation. That's the technical term, in you're wondering.

Amber Pike (02:35.982)
And when one kid starts acting this way, the others do it. We have one kid at my church and she absolutely will act like that. Whatever that child is, if the behavior of everyone's like super chill and calm and good listeners, that's her. But if they start bouncing off the walls, she starts bouncing off the walls. She's a great kid, but she kind of matches the room's energy. So

How do we help prevent this squirreliness? How do we help engage kids in our lesson to where they're not squirrely, they're not talking or distracted, all that? Well, it comes in our planning time. So we don't need to react, we need to be proactive and helping eliminate this squirreliness. So we can call it classroom management, but really it's just another layer of lesson prep that is helping to make classroom time better. I have to get a sip of coffee here.

Sorry, if you're listening, I have a really cute mug that says the book is better. So I don't have classroom rules. I do have rooms. No classroom rules. I know some people do. They have a list of rules and they make them all cute and they have them posted. The kids go over them. This might hurt your feelings, but I think that's ridiculous. We don't need rules. It's children's ministry. It's not school. It's an hour. We need to be training our leaders on how to

Proactively eliminate the need for rules. And if one of your rules is that you need to sit quietly, I want to push back and challenge you to think about why. Why do we need them to sit quietly? I want church to be fun. I want them engaged in the lesson. I want them to feel free to stop me and ask me a question, especially if the Holy Spirit is working on something in their heart or they're trying to piece something together. I don't want them to feel like they're going to get in trouble for talking to Miss Amber.

So why are you asking them to sit quietly? Okay, so if you are noticing, just kind of think for a second, some of that, okay, are we seeing squirrely kids? Are we seeing disengaged kids? Kids who are talking when they're not, they should be listening. Kids who don't want to be part of the activities. Kids who check out maybe at a certain point of lesson time consistently. Just kind of do a quick little assessment. How engaged are your kids in the lesson? The more engaged they are, the less time they have for squirreliness.

Amber Pike (04:57.278)
That's quotable, people. The more engaged they are, the less chance there is for squirreliness. So in teaching, I think the coolest breakout that I've ever taught because the title was the best was entitled Beyond the Flannel Graph, right? It was a multi-sensory teaching style smart thing. And I came up with an acronym for you. So I want you to remember this. Remember to smile.

This is our acronym to remember what we need to do when we check our lessons. Now,

I'm saying the mean thought. Some of the people writing children's ministry curriculum have never served in children's ministry. Some of the people writing children's ministry curriculum served a very short period of time decades ago. So you as a ministry leader, whether you are the person in charge, the small group leader, the craft teacher, whatever role you have, if you were, if you have a role in the curriculum teaching part,

You need to be checking your lessons to make sure that they're actually going to work for your kids. And what works for my kids might be different than what works for your kids. My particular group of kids absolutely love coloring. If I made the interactive activity every week where they are drawing out what we read in the Bible, they would be so happy. But I've got like 11 girls and one little boy. So they love coloring. They would rather color than do anything.

So currently my Sunday school thing is we are doing a 52 weeks through the Bible. We're walking through the 66 books of the Bible, just kind of an overview. And I'm using this Bible coloring book from Answers in Genesis. it's so my daughter is making a book of all of hers because that's her mom. And we'll have 66, well, not quite 66 because they combine like first, second, third, John. But we'll have this book of a coloring page for all the books of the Bible at the end. My kids love it.

Amber Pike (06:56.406)
and it's an intentional, it's not just a filler, it's a great busy hands and they have a cool thing to show. Your kids might hate coloring. If you've got a fourth, fifth grade group of boys, I guarantee you if you bring out coloring pages or crafts, there will be a mutiny most of the time. That's a generalization, but you know. So what works for my kids is gonna be different from your kids. And a curriculum writer might or might not have nailed it.

in terms of engagement during lesson time. So you need to check your lesson and do so by remembering to smile.

So what does that stand for? Because that doesn't just mean smile pretty, your lesson will be great. No, each thing stands for something in an acronym. So the first one is sit still time. The first thing I am checking, how long do I have my kids sitting in their seat just listening?

This is a know your kids and developmentally know children. Being honest, I don't think there's that much difference between a four year old and a fourth grader and how long they're sitting still in today's times. How long are your kids sitting still though? When I was working on my Easter lesson, I'm writing it and I'm like, ooh, I've got them sitting still way too long. They have sat in this one spot just listening for too long. So how do I change that?

When kids are sitting still, just listening, some are disengaged. If we are getting into learning styles and learning smarts and just kids' preferences on learning, some kids aren't just listeners. They need to be seeing something. That is me. If you speak something to me, I can understand it, but I would much prefer just to read it. I talk about this in my book, Intentional Children's Ministry.

Amber Pike (08:49.568)
I'm homeschool and whenever my son because I'm not a math person whenever my son would need help with a math problem he'll start because here's his desk my desk is over here we're down in our basement and he'll start reading the math problem like nope bring it to me I got no clue I heard a number I can't do it in my head I need to see it so you're gonna have kids like that if you have them just sitting still and just listening

Kids are checking out and what do they do when they check out? They start talking to their friend. They start crawling under the table. They start eating the paper, you know, all the things that kids do. How do we make sure that they're not sitting still too long? Well, this is when you make it interactive. so I'm going to go through the I'm going go through smile first and then we'll talk about some practical things. So we're checking how long are they sitting still? M movement. Where is the body movement? It is a scientific fact. When we are moving, it is engaging our brains.

So if we are working on memorizing something, memorizing scripture or the books of the Bible, if we add a movement to it, it's actually activating part of our brain. I'm not a sciencey person. I can't tell you what part that is, but I know that it's legit. Body movement will help our brains work better. It's also a great re-engaging tactic. So if you've kind of lost them, get them moving. This could be a physical movement where we're thumbs up, thumbs down.

Something simple that you can toss in. So I did this on Sunday. They were just a little squirrely on Easter, right? I wonder why none of them for sure ate candy for breakfast, which I really don't care. I let my kids eat candy for breakfast. Like go for kids, but they were just a little. So I would just simply, okay, show me your face if this had been you. So we started off with the death of Lazarus. I was talking about Jesus has power over death and we were doing Lazarus and then we're to do Jesus's resurrection.

And I wanted them, I'm like, okay, show me your face if your best friend had died. And then they make a face. That was like a 16 second add-in, but it got some movement. And so I added this at a couple other places. had them show me their surprised face and their scared face and their angry face, because the Pharisees were angry, you know, all that, boom. Their faces just moved, but they had to think about it and they moved. And it was a little bit of fun and silliness, but there was movement added in instead of just sitting and listening.

Amber Pike (11:12.642)
So how can we add movement? Again, we're gonna talk practicals in a minute. So we sit still, movement, eye, interactive. We want the kids to be active participants, not just listeners sitting there. So how can they be part of the lesson? So some of us, depending on how we are wired and how we like to learn, we like to do lecture style, even for kids.

There are kids like my son, he is totally cool. He's 14, totally cool for a lecture. Always has been. He's a fact kid, loves it. But my daughter is not that way. She needs to be involved. So this is how can they be part of it? If you are doing a science experiment or object lesson, how can they do part of it instead of just watch? We want to engage them in the lessons, make it be interactive to where they have a part. want...

active participants. This is great for our kinesthetic learners that like doing things with their hands. They're involved in it. They're a part of it and that actually means their brains are going to remember it a little bit better because they had a part in it. So where can we add interactive elements where they get to participate and do the things? And you want to include everybody. Now depending on your church size this could be a little hard. If you've got

300 kids in your large group teaching time. How can you involve all of them, right? They all can't come up on stage and act out the Bible story But are there things that they could do there in their seats? Can they make the face like they would in there? Can they all? You know, okay Jesus calms the storm. I want you all we're in a giant boat now rock this way now rock that way and the winds blow and everybody scream

Make it interactive, how can they be part of it? The larger your group is, the harder that is going to be, but it can be done. Think full group games, full group activities. With this, I'm gonna have full body games that they can do there at their seats. It can be done, you just need to be intentional with it. All right, S, it's still time. movement I, interactive. L, look and listen.

Amber Pike (13:25.75)
This is the reminder that we need to involve multiple senses at the same time, multiple learning styles. So my kids who love just to hear things are auditory learners. That hits them, but what about our visual learners? So if I'm speaking something, I want something for them to look at, a picture in their Bibles to read the scripture. This is when I, maybe just because I'm a visual learner and I want kids in the Bibles.

I have my kids in their Bibles. I don't put it up on screen. They're in Bibles. Now I'm small church, I can do that. Big church, you might not have enough hands to help turn to all the Bibles. I'm talking my two and a half year old niece is in her Bible. She can't read, but she's in her Bible and her finger is on the spot. It's good practice. A lot of them, are they following along? No, they're not readers yet, but it's a really good practice. It gives them something to look at, something to put their finger on.

But think how can we engage multiple learning smarts and styles to where we have layers of learning happening? For example, this past Sunday, Easter, if you're listening to this when it came out, otherwise, hey, a few Sundays ago, I was talking about Jesus's resurrection, obviously, but I wanted to help them give them a little bit of historical context. So Jesus was laid in a tomb.

well, that's not how we bury people. And I know my kids have been to gravesides, they have experienced death in their family and their life, so they're familiar with funerals. But even my daughter during our devotion time leading up to it, she's like, wait a minute, mom. So I had a picture to describe what our current burials look like versus what Jesus's burials look like. Visual and auditory, it was happening. I then layered in with some object lessons, some tactile things, it was funny.

I had a burial cloth and I was explaining, know, cause Lazarus, came out with the cloth still on him, right? And so I was explaining this with the tactile thing they could see. And my daughter's like, well, who gets to be the dead person? And I'm like, um, I wasn't going to have anybody dress up. thought that would be taken it a little too far. I'm like, I didn't think anybody would really want to be the dead person. And all of them keep in mind all girls, one boy. They're all like, I do, I want to be it.

Amber Pike (15:49.774)
All of the children wanted to be the dead person wrapped up in the burial cloth. Sweet little precious girls. Love it. But we're layering all of these things. I give options. If you are a reader, you know, you can you can write this or you can draw this. Give options, layer these learning smarts and styles. That's a whole nother podcast. I can't super get into it this way. Hey, by the way, I have a whole chapter of this in my book. You should go check it out. All right. S. Sits still time. M. Movement. I. Interactive.

L, look and listen, and then E, energy. So this is the what's fun. We want kids to have fun at church. It is not the main goal, but I think it should be a goal, which is part of the reason why I don't like classroom rules, because then it just feels ugh. We want it to be fun. We want them to enjoy it. We want to make learning God's word fun. So where's the high energy thing in your lesson?

Is it a super awesome intentional game? Is it a snack-tivity that is going to be so delicious they're going to love it? Is it an experience that they get to have and something that they're going to remember? Where's that at in the lesson? There should be something. So a couple of weeks ago in our series that we're currently on, I'm writing Miracles of Jesus, I wanted to do Jesus commanded the wind and the waves to stop. So I had them.

And then they knew as soon as I brought out the props the ones who've done it before they're like yes, this is so fun So I put out my blue photo backdrop fabric on the ground. That's my water and then I have a boat front. It's Honestly taller than some of my kids because I got short kids, but it's just the cardboard front of a boat so you can fit as many in it as you need because it's not a whole boat and They walked in and it was cute because my daughter told one of our little girls wears glasses. She's like take your glasses off. Just trust me

and they get in the boat and I put the turn the lights off and I put the storm on the screen and it's really loud and I spray them with a water bottle or a spray bottle and a fan and it's an experience and they loved it. The squeals. and then we did it again because the squeals. That was our high energy that day. They loved it. They remembered it. So are you remembering to smile in your lessons?

Amber Pike (18:10.028)
When you get your lesson and you should be doing pre prep, you should not be just grabbing your lesson and looking at it the five minutes before as kids come in the classroom. No, no, no, no, no. You need to assess these things. How long are they sitting? Where do we need to add movement? Is there something interactive? Are we layering learning smarts, learning styles where they're hearing, they're seeing, they're doing? And where's the energy? What's fun about this lesson? All of it needs to be intentional.

If I'm thinking, well, there's not really anything fun, so we're just gonna play tag just because we can play tag. Nope, nope, no. It needs to be intentional, done with a purpose, and all of this can be done to teach the lesson. We're reviewing, we're introducing, we're teaching. Yes, it can be done. So a couple of examples, just thinking of some stuff that I do that really helps. When I notice some squirreliness, sometimes we need to get out of our seats and we need to go somewhere different.

So I will have them get out of their chairs and come sit on the floor for no reason other than that movement from point A to point B, just re-engage their brains. It's kind of like a little reset. I will take them to a different, we'll go in the hallway for no reason other than we'll do that part in the hallway just because they need to re-engage. This is also, so that's like my emergency fix.

But then this is also a great thing for intentionality. My last church had a much bigger classroom and I would be really intentional with moving us in parts of the room. We had actually busted out some walls so I had a big room and we had tables in the back and had risers in the front. And I would definitely, we would have our like teaching time start out in the risers and then I would send us back to the tables and chairs to do an activity. Then we'd come back to the risers and there'd usually be a candy break in between. So, okay, as you finish this activity at the tables,

Once you come grab your piece at your treat and go sit back down. And so that would kind of be the cue to let's finish up what we're doing at the tables, get our candy as we had to our seats and then the mouse were engaged for a minute. That movement time is super great for engaging, re-engaging, resetting, a little bit of wiggle getting out. Boom. Can you move rooms? Can you move spots? Even if you have a small classroom, you still can move spots. Think about

Amber Pike (20:24.308)
getting them to move their bodies in the lesson. This is a mix of some of those. Instead of just teaching them points like, okay, attributes of God, he is loving, he is kind, he is holy. Instead of just telling them something, can I turn it into a game and activity where they're using their body? So, okay, we're reviewing this teaching point as we gear up to our big point.

Now, who remembers about God? Let's see. If you think the word that I say describes God, I want you to give me two thumbs up. But if it doesn't, I want you to make your arms into an X and go, the sound super helpful. You've heard it before, but it is. Can they do that? Can they move from this side of the room to that side of the room or to stand up or to sit down? Those simple things. You can just turn your teaching points into a question. It's getting their bodies moving. It's engaging them in it. They're then an active participant in the lesson.

I do the same thing with flags. I have flags. I have signs for them to hold. Very helpful. I talked about it earlier, having them use their face. You there's a lot of emotion shown in the Bible. So as we're going through, as we are reading scripture or we are moving to the application part of it, hey, show me your face. How would you have felt if this were you? Show me with your face. You can have people act it out if you're small enough.

or big enough I did when we were doing the Israelites crossing the Red Sea. was, you know, small church, so one man band. I was holding up my fabric backdrop and they walked across as the Israelites and then I had them run back around and when they walked across as the Egyptians, all of them, I threw the fabric on them. They were engaged, they were acting it out. It was a lot of fun.

Sometimes you need to pivot. think I've told this before if you've listened to all my episodes you get to hear it again during VBS my kids during the ceremony time were just we had a couple of them who were literally like climbing the pews and my workers were trying but So I would have them get out of the pews and into like the little aisle between the pews to see my object lesson and it was a magic trick and I had their eyes on me because they moved so it's something different and then

Amber Pike (22:44.418)
I get really close to them and I would start to whisper. And do you know when you change your volume, it really engages them because they're like, what is she saying? You don't have to yell. Same thing, if we're talking, little rabbit chase here. If we're talking about behavioral things, these redirects are what we should be trying to do on the beginning, right? Plan our lessons to where we're shooting for maximum engagement, but then try some redirects, add some movement, change spots in the room.

you know, change our volume, things like that. But then sometimes we do need to fuss and that's okay. We can correct behavior. I have found it very effective. I just stopped teaching.

and just look at him. And that one kid is going to be like, Oh, you need to be quiet. Ms. Ambers, Ms. Ambers got the face. There have been times when I have had to use my mommy voice and I have had to fuss over the volume of the kids because they are way too loud. I've had a couple of instances where I've made kids cry. Yeah. I had one at camp where someone, he just crossed the line. Um, and we had talks. Parents were informed. Yes. But

That's not our goal. We don't want to have to do that. We want to work on the before and making sure that we're engaging them because if they're engaged, they're less likely to act out, act up. On the whole, there's obviously, especially when you're dealing with some trauma issues, kids who've got some home life situations, something as simple as the fact that they might be hungry. Know your kids. Does their family have food at home?

If not, it's kind of hard to listen when you are hungry. Same thing kind of with skill level. If a new kid comes in and let's say all of your kids are strong Christians, solid Bible knowledge, they have, you know, all the answers can recite scripture after scripture. And then a new kid comes in with no biblical understanding. He fills out a place and

Amber Pike (24:54.09)
No one likes to feel stupid. So that's prime time to act out and up. How can you address this before? We don't want to have to be parrots that fuss. Stop that. Sit down. Blah, blah, blah, blah. know, whatever. So how do we address it on the front end? That's the mindset I challenge you to. Look for the cause of why they are acting squirrely.

Chances are they're not engaged for some reason. So how do you engage them? And this smile acronym friends, it's what I do. It's what I do when I write my lessons. And I've got pretty engaged kids at multiple churches. I've done this. So I've seen it work. You know, I can do this at camp with lots of kids. I'm engaging them. We're keeping it moving. Segments are fast, but they're important and they're impactful and they're intentional. And I'm engaging lots. I am

letting kids have chances to do things, whether it's a couple on stage and in addition to everybody during my VBS ceremonies, I am really, really intentional about making sure, we've got the stage games where they're earning points for their team, but then I've got the games that everybody can play. It's no fun if you don't get to do the thing ever. You guys know this. So how are we engaging our kids to reduce that squirreliness? I would love to hear some of your ways.

A couple of things, if you're like, yes, I need all of this. If you are listening to this fairly currently on April 21st, 2026 in our Facebook group, the Family Ministry Community, we at Renew Nation have a closed Facebook group for ministry leaders. We are doing a live training, Josh and I on classroom management. And so we're going to have some more tips and tricks and helpful things for you because I mean,

We know if kids aren't listening, they're not hearing the truth of God's word and they're not growing in their faith and we want them to listen. So April 21st in the family ministry community, I'm going to drop a link in that show notes. It's a live, it's not a sign up, it's free. So literally you just pop in the Facebook group and you watch it either live or it'll be pinned to the top for like 30 days because then Facebook deletes them. Definitely check that out. If this is hitting home with you and you haven't already checked out my book, Intentional Children's Ministry.

Amber Pike (27:14.166)
I challenge you to go get that. It's available in print and audio and ebook. You can hear me read it if you just love me talking fast to you. A whole section on learning tools, object lessons, using our learning smarts and styles. And then if this is something you think that your team would really benefit from, hey, did you know that I, do one-on-one coaching? But then two, would love to come in and help do a training for your team. If we're training our team,

on how to do these things, maybe less than time is going better being like super interactive and intentional. So to close, just give you a couple of ideas. Think about moving them in the room. Think about engaging them, full body stuff. I do a lot of four corners. You can do that with questions, but then layering. So even though I have a lot of non-readers, if I've got a trivia game moved to this side or that side, I've whipped it up on Canva to where they can see. Multisensory learning approach. I have...

a prize box or a question box and we can pull questions out. I can make it into a race on this past Sunday. We were our big teaching point. How could Jesus raise Lazarus? How could he rise from the dead? Well, it's because Jesus is God. He has the power of God. So instead of just telling them this, I was asking myself, how do I engage them in this? So I broke them up into teams. I took hula hoops. Each team had two hula hoops. One hula hoop had the pieces that would spell Jesus is God. One letter per piece.

and they had to relay race it from one hula hoop to the other and put it in order. Now this didn't go well on Sunday because my pastor ended early and I'm like, we're not done and parents are there and I'm like, we're not done. It's five till on Easter Sunday. Why are we done early? But it's fine. We made it work. it was a game. It was engaging. It was fun. It moved the bodies. It taught the teaching point. Everyone got to participate. Boom. Yes.

Get yourself some flags, get yourself a laminator, make signs, yes, no, true, false, thumbs up, thumbs down. Buzzers, I've done buzzers where you can do like relay style, any kind of relay thing where they're picking something out of the box and deciding yes or no. Great trivia, great review. It's engaging them in the lesson. Some of these things should be planned in advance and then just kind of keep a back pocket repertoire of these things when things go south, when kids get squirrely, when it's Easter Sunday and they ate chocolate bunnies for breakfast.

Amber Pike (29:34.158)
Pull these out, add some movement in because, guys, the goal, we want boys and girls to hear the truths of God's word. We want them engaged in the lesson so that they are, one, choosing to follow Christ, but then, two, growing in their faith. That's our goal. Hey, if I can help, reach out to me. If you have enjoyed this podcast, go send it to a friend. Go leave a review. That helps it get shown to more people. And remember, what you do matters.