Tips and Tricks for One-Room Sunday School

Coming to church for an extra hour of education and discipleship is not a priority for as many people as it used to be.

On top of that, our church has two locations for worship services and Sunday school, which limits volunteers. Because of this, splitting up our Sunday School kids into grades isn’t a realistic option for our church. Thankfully, the Enduring Faith One Room Study Guide curriculum has met the unique needs of our church. Hopefully, these tips and tricks will help you determine if this version of Enduring Faith Curriculum could be helpful at your church year-round or during the summer months.

Best Components of This Enduring Faith Curriculum

Overall, I would say the One-Room curriculum gives us lots of options for activities to reinforce the lesson. The “Live” section of each lesson’s leader instructions gives six to eight activity options so teachers have the ability to pick and choose what applies well in their setting. We never know how many kids will show up on a Sunday morning, so having options gives our teachers the flexibility to do what works well on any given day.

In addition to flexible activities in each lesson, the Bible story portion of each lesson is also flexible. Having the option of a Bible narrative for younger and older children is a wonderful feature of this curriculum. On days when we have a lot of kids, we will split into two groups. When we split into groups of older and younger, we usually have preschool–first grade going through the narrative for younger children as well as a storybook Bible or Arch Book. With the second–fifth graders, we use the narrative for older children, read it straight from the Bible, and discuss it at their age level. Having the option to split into groups when there are more kids or to stay together on days with lighter attendance is extremely helpful, and the One-Room Curriculum enables us to do that. 

Unique Digital Feature of the One-Room Curriculum

The process to purchase individual units of the One-Room curriculum is very simple. It saves time and money to get one downloadable guide that works for multiple ages. The digital access allows us to instantly have all the leader materials and activity sheets for the whole unit so we don’t have to wait for it to come in the mail. Just print it off, and you’re good to go!

Benefits of Multiple-Age Sunday School

This one-room model allows the Sunday morning experience for kids to be different from what they get in school all week long. Many of our Sunday School students are together with others in their grade at our Lutheran school all week, but on Sunday mornings, they have the opportunity to learn and share faith alongside older and younger students they don’t get to see as often.

Additionally, when multiple ages are together, older children are given opportunities for leadership. When teachers view their fourth and fifth graders as assistants, then those fourth and fifth graders have opportunities for more ownership and responsibility to help the younger ones with whatever activities they are doing.

A Sustainable Volunteer Model for Sunday School

My church has moved to a model where we have anywhere between two and four teachers for preschool–fifth grade; these teachers rotate teaching the lesson. This way, only one person has to prepare a lesson for Sunday morning, and that person only has to do so once every two to four weeks.

We also have people who serve in the role of assistant. They don’t have to prepare anything in advance. They just show up on Sunday morning to help assist with whatever activities the group is doing that day. They also help with crowd control, taking kids to the bathroom, and so on. We have found this model of a volunteer rotation paired with the One-Room curriculum to be much more sustainable for our church post-pandemic. If your church is struggling to get more volunteers to work with children on Sunday mornings, this One-Room curriculum may be able to help alleviate some of your stress!

Take a closer look at the Enduring Faith One-Room Curriculum or purchase it for your church.