Well, welcome back, and again, I'm so thankful that you get to hear my Master's  voice, in some ways, not my Master Jesus, but my former master and teacher,  Barb Newman. She taught me so much and in our years in children's ministry,  which is where we're going to now turn our attention is this idea of universal  design as it is displayed in children and youth ministry. So we're going to think  about that. But I actually worked for Barb in our children's ministry for many  years, and that's where we first became colleagues as well. So let's talk about  what. What does it mean now, as we say, universal design for children's and  youth ministry context. So let's turn our attention there as a way of thinking  about how you prepare your space, your time, your equipment, your people, to  expect children of all abilities to participate fully in this. So again, I want you to  hear from Barb a little bit. She's going to talk about something called the  vineyard dock, which is what our children's ministry was called. We were a part  of vineyard church, and we lived along the Lakeshore, and so you'll just hear her use that phraseology, but that's actually where she and I first engaged in our  ministry journey together, although she had more years of ministry experience  on her belt by that point than I did. So again, just learn a little bit from her, and  then I'll step back in and teach you some more things as well. 

Barb - “I was the children's ministry director in my own church for about 14  years, when I was actually piloting materials we were using at Zeeland  Christian, turning them into church speak and church environment. And we  experimented a whole bunch. But one of the things that I did was every summer, the children would come in that first summer day, we gave our typical staff, the  regular staff, sort of the summer off, and we brought in all of these volunteers  that were just covering for the summer. And they were great. They were fun, but  the kids were really confused, and the little ones would cry like, what happened  to all of my teachers, and where, why are we in a different room, and why are  these big kids in here with us? And one of the things that we found out, or I've  tried, was to send home just a story with the kids summer at the vineyard docks. And I sent home, hey, summer is a time when we can do some things differently. Just sent home, sort of an order, pictures of what we were going to do, the  different rooms and the different people that they might see over the summer.  And it was just amazing to watch the difference between the past summers and  the summer that I started sending those home. Because kids came in excited.  They were ready. They knew what was going to happen. They knew who would  be there, they knew what room we were going to be in, all because they had  gotten some information ahead of time. So whether you're preparing for a youth  group trip, an adult mission trip, a children's ministry change, like summers,  whatever that might be, might I suggest, think hotel preview. What am I looking  for in that, and how can I offer that to people along the way? I think another  thing in preparation is we need to remember that as we recruit volunteers, as we

put people in place in children and youth programs, are they expecting children  and youth of all abilities, to be part of that setting? So part of universal design is  connecting with those who are leaders, giving them some tools. How can we  give them what they need so that they feel prepared when that youth group  member walks in and might have a significant vision difference, or you may have a second grader with autism spectrum disorder, and they don't take this as a  shock, but they take this as Oh, okay, so we have kids of varied abilities.” 

So what Barb was introducing is a little bit about social stories. And I want to talk about those a little bit as well, because I think those are extremely helpful in our  children and youth settings. In particular. They can be helpful for all ages and  stages. So we could talk about that as well, sort of previews on your church  website and some things like that. But when we're talking about children, right,  she talked about those stories of how these so helped children in those  transitions from one thing to the next. And so want to share with you just a little  bit about this, because if you think about it, right, if you're traveling, you might  want to know what kind of a place you're going to spend the night in, right? If  you're going to a hotel. And Barb kind of hinted at this, but what you might do is  look it up online, right? Got to get some reviews, find out some things like, do  they provide breakfast? Is there internet? Is there air conditioning? What do the  beds look like? What's the shower like? That kind of a thing you want to find out  before you go. And that's the idea that we're talking about here. These social  stories are a way of previewing what you're getting yourself into, the situation,  the expectations and the flow of activities. So that's what we're talking about  here. And I want to show you one that I created for our church called my  communion story. It's kind of this, Know Before You Go, kind of information that's great for so many people, and it can be essential for some kids and those  especially with high anxiety, those who rely on routine, those who need to plan  their food and their liquid intake based on their time and activities and the  distance from a restroom or that kind of a thing. There may be many reasons,  which is why this is a great example of universal design. So this one, I walked  an individual through the process of going for communion, because this church  didn't do it every single week. It was only like once a month. And so we talked  through and used real pictures of the individuals that they were going to interact  with. And we said, first, this is what happens, and then next, this is what  happens. And then this is what happens in pictures of what it looked like to sit in  the chair, what the bread was like, what the juice was like. And so these, this is  an example of one that I created specifically for a very single church and a  family in this church, but the story was universally helpful for others in the  church as well. Right? It was, this is how we do communion in our church. And  the idea of social stories and the use of them is universally helpful. So there are  a lot of great places now who are coming up with these resources in a way that 

is principle, that is kind of plug and play. So you simply download it, print it, and  off you go. Or you can simply use it on your screen and flip through it and show  someone and so some of these are available from resources like simply the  gospel. It's an organization that's serving churches with resources. Their  templates are for purchase to download, and you can customize them with the  real pictures from within your church context. What I like about it is that they  have a one page version that's sort of the words with the text, but then they also  have a half page version that's a big picture and big words, so two different  options to choose from, both of them customizable. They also have some kind of more plug and play ones that are more like an animated picture rather than a  personalized, real picture. But some other organizations have different versions  of this as well. Awe and wonder is a great set of resources. They have a library  of things also for purchase, to download, so that you can print and use it. So  they're using just a sort of infographic, kind of picture with some words, but they  do have some editable options, which you can use and put in real pictures as  well. So a couple of great resources, just to tell you what's out there. You don't  have to make this up yourself. There are wonderful organizations who are  creating these and templates for you to use. There's one by an organization  called known international that I want to show you. So this one is not necessarily customized. It's just you can download this and print it for free. And so they say,  when I go to church, I will have fun with friends and learn about Jesus. When I  get to church, I will say bye to mom and dad and go to Sunday school. During  Sunday school, I can sing songs with my friends. I will sit and listen to stories  about Jesus. If I have something to say, I will raise my hand, and if I get  overwhelmed, I will say, I need a break please. Now I love this, because their  language is person first, right? So it's the person who's reading the story who's  going to identify these things. It's giving behavior expectations, and it's also  setting them up for what can happen. So if I need a break, I can say so, and  then there will be an opportunity to take a break, and there's a system in place  for that. So I'm just trying to illustrate to you there are some versions out there  that you can utilize. You don't have to create this yourself, and they're a great  tool to be used that can help kids all across the board. There are ways to do this for just engaging in church or for that youth group overnight, or so many different scenarios, but it's a great tool to use. And so I want to think some more about  those people, our shredded cheese people, who are the ones who are  committed to creating belonging with the people of all abilities. And so as we  shift to talking about equipping our volunteers and our leaders, and I am thinking specifically about what does it look like to equip people with universal design  principles? And so what I want to share with you is some organizations and  some resources of people who are learning about what's working and what's not and what could be improved in your space, right these shredded cheese people  are the ones who are thinking about, what's working well, what do we need to 

change? What do we need to update? They might have experience with  disability themselves or background in education. I've already mentioned how  helpful it can be to have someone who is, for example, an occupational  therapist, someone with maybe a medical background, have on hand. There are all kinds of people who may already be in your community, who can be this  shredded cheese, but they can also just be a consultant for your community. So  they may not be the ones who are consistently your volunteers or your leaders,  but they can inform you and help you to think about what needs to be in place,  or how to make improvements on what's in place. And I also want to encourage  you that there are organizations you can lean on for this. And so some that have been places where I've done some teaching and that I've also learned a great  deal from are the international network of children's ministry. Now they put on a  conference in the United States every year called the children's pastors  conference. And so if you're in children's ministry, or if you're trying to equip  those who are as a phenomenal resource. And the international network of  children's ministry has great resources. They have been able to lean into,  excuse me, quite a bit of this idea of universal design and just thinking for kids  with disabilities to be a part of things. So look into some of their resources. A  couple other ones I want to mention are with ministries. They're going to come  up several times throughout this course, and they actually house the resources  if you wanted to buy a copy of, for example, Barb's book, worship as one varied  abilities in the body of Christ. But they are all about equipping congregations to  be places of belonging. So highly encourage you to look into them. But one  other one that I want to talk about really quickly is called Nathaniel's hope. They  have a program called buddy break, and I've actually partnered with them and  done some webinars, and I'm really excited about they do because buddy break  is a respite program. So they train people to be able to say, yes, we want you to  bring your child with disabilities here, and so we will care for that child and do  fun activities with that child. While you as a family, go and take a break and do  something different besides caregiving. And so that's called buddy break, and  they equip churches to do this buddy break. But what they're also doing is  they're presenting churches an opportunity, and they equip people with this  buddy break training. And so now through that buddy bake, buddy break  training, those volunteers are equipped to have a little bit of expertise in working  with kids with disabilities, that training is what can help them to now also do this  well in your worship services, in your Sunday School hour, in your VBS, right?  That training is really helpful for them. They've gained some comfort. They gain  some experience working with kids with disabilities. So if you're looking to equip  your volunteers and your leaders, those are a couple great places to go with  ministries, and Nathaniel’s Hope, particularly their buddy break training. And I  would just suggest that you browse the website of the disability ministry network. That is a network of organizations who are all serving congregations who desire 

to have people with disabilities be at the forefront of the voice of this initiative,  and to say, You know what? We need to be places of belonging where people  with disabilities are a part of everything that we do. And so there are  organizations coming at that from different avenues and different experiences.  Some are denominational heads. Some are resource ministries, like list  ministries or Nathaniel's hope. Others are direct service providers, and so  there's a great variety on there, but I just encourage you to look at that website  to notice how much is available to help you be equipped as a congregation, as a ministry leader, as a faith community member who simply is is just not alone in  this. There are great resources out there. So I want you to know that there are  things out there and people excited to help you think about this, so be equipped. Now. I also just want to talk to you a little bit about I now I want to talk to you  about a few more universal design ideas, and so let's just go through these a  little bit more in depth and see what I'm talking about. So one of them is just  thinking about how you prepare your spaces. We talked about providing options, right? So thinking about the way that you want kids to engage with things, are  you providing the options that help them to choose to do that? So do you have  one on one spaces? Do you have tables where they can do some of the maybe  hands on activities? Do they have enough space to maneuver? Can they  choose to use technology to have opportunities for quiet versus opportunities for group interaction? So just thinking about how you prepare your spaces, I think is a really helpful place as you're thinking about that idea of being prepared for  kids with disabilities to be a part of this. So offering options with your spaces, I  also want you to think about providing options for your seating, right? So  whether you have chairs that have a back and or have arms, or a chair that  rocks, or a chair with a wiggle cushion and some theraband on it that provides a  little bit of movement and something to kick against, whether you have seating  that is. Real wiggly stool that allows for kids to move around, or a bean bag  that's a completely different kind of seating experience. Or these parking spots,  is what they're called. They're large carpet squares that a child's body can sit on  it, but now they don't cover up the whole thing once they sat down over it, like so many of our circle carpet pin or I'm using our small carpet squares. Or, you  know, if we say, go sit on your colored dot. Well, soon as the child sits on it, their body covers it up, and now they don't know where the boundary is of what's  their space or not. So having something that's big enough that they can still see  the boundary of it around them, even while they're sitting on it, is just a beautiful  way of offering a new option. And so that's if they're sitting on the floor. How  about sitting on an exercise ball, like I've brought up before? And so this is often  called flexible seating, but the idea is just that you offer options, and kids can  choose what works for them to engage Now mind you, it's not a question of, Do  you want to engage in the activity or go sit in the beanbag? It's a question of  where would you like to sit in order to participate in this, right? So you're offering

the options, but not the option to not participate, and so you get to set the  boundaries, but offer the options for the children to choose. So flexible seating is one of these things that is a great example of universal design, because you're  offering lots of different options. You can offer structure to your space, as I've  already said about your location and the room that you're in, but you can also  structure it in ways that you might not be realizing. So for example, if you're  sitting on a stool, you have no back. That's very little structure. Or if you're sitting on the floor, there's very little structure. If you sit on a chair now you have  something under you as well as maybe something behind you. If you put arms  on that chair, it has structure on three sides. You push that chair up against a  table, now you have structure on four sides. So you're really engaging in  different levels of the amount of structure you're providing. So think about that  as you prepare your space, and what you're asking kids to engage in doing so  that you're providing the proper amount of structure. You can even structure  time. And we will talk about this several times over this course, that time is a  tricky thing, and so providing structure for it is really, really helpful. So visual  schedules, like it's been mentioned already, and a timer, and I love this timer  that actually has a little whiteboard with it, so you can say what is happening  during that time, and then when the time runs out, you can write a new message on the whiteboard and change the timer and start out again, or a visual schedule that's much more like paired with words and has something that can actually be  moved. So this is what we're doing now. This is what we're going to do next. And maybe you have a child who's the one that moves that marker from the one  thing to the next thing. So a visual schedule that's really interactive can be  helpful, again, helps them to know this is where we are in time right now. And a  time, a timer of some sort, like this, traffic light timer, can be another way of  talking about it, so that when the light is green, you have a lot of time, kind of  nothing to worry about. Just keep going on the activity. When it turns yellow or is flashing yellow, that's telling you that we're almost out of time. Wrap up what  you're doing and when, then when it's red, you're out of time. It's time to end that that activity. And so for some kids, that's an easier way of thinking about the time they have left. But all these ideas are just ways that you can structure something even as sort of nebulous as time. And I want to encourage you that offering  structure can be extremely helpful. So you can structure your materials as well.  Sometimes the visual overwhelm of looking at materials can be what's causing  non participation. And so you can just add some color to the background. You  can have these. It's a bookmark shaped thing called an E z c reader, literally the  letters E z c reader. And it's the size of a bookmark, and it just has a little colored strip that you can see through that kind of highlights one line of text. And they're  really helpful to structure what it is you're looking at when you're reading just  one line of text. For those who might get frustrated about coloring and they're  not sure which lines they're supposed to stay within, highlight the line that you 

want them to focus on. If you're talking about Joseph's beautiful coat, just add  the color right there for them to focus on that part of the picture, right or this  other beautiful stuff known as highlighter tapes, you're using a lot of highlighting. This stuff is a magical substance that will highlight something. It's a piece of tape that you can see through, and it will peel right off of even a Bible page without  tearing anything. It's just wonderful stuff. So now that highlighting comes off and  you can remove it and put it on something else, or move it to the next place, or  just remove it in general, so that it doesn't stay there forever. You can highlight  something and then take the highlighting away. It's wonderful. So these are all  just a few ways of adding structure to the actual paper materials that you might  be working with. But the idea is, you prepare adaptations, right? You're giving  options, always giving those options. And I like to encourage people to think of  offering instead of so if this doesn't work for you, maybe this will instead. So that might be, you know, we're engaging with the Bible story by reading it and  singing songs, but that might not work for this individual, and so they're going to  need a real object in order to connect with it. So if we're talking about measuring in cubits, and that's a really hard thing for us to think about, what are we talking  about when we measure it was 50 cubits wide? Well, maybe you have a cubit  measuring stick to talk about that, and where you make one, and you say it's the length of your elbow to the tips of your fingers, and that's a cubit. And so we're  going to make a cubit measuring stick, and we're going to measure 50 of them,  right? So you have real stuff to work with, or maybe you get bricks to talk about  when you're talking about the furnace, right? So you have real bricks to work  with, but they need tangible things in order to connect with the Bible story or  whatever it is that you're connecting with. So having some real stuff in place can actually be extremely valuable for a lot of kiddos, and helps all of us to learn  better. The other thing I would suggest is have people in place for those  adaptations. Again, that shredded cheese person, or maybe we're actually  talking about more like a buddy or an assistant, a sidekick, just someone who  knows that individual well, who can be right alongside and say, oh, you know  what, cutting that out is going to really be a challenge. So why don't I help by  and they'll know exactly what to do, right? Or asking the individual, hey, is this  working for you? Or can I help in some way? So not doing things necessarily for  the individual, but coming alongside them, and knowing that individual well, and  just being able to partner. So having people in place is extremely helpful. So  these are just some ways that you can be prepared in that kind of thinking about doing things in advance. And you've heard us already talking about how many  visuals are extremely helpful. And so when we talk about how Jesus taught,  right, he used a lot of visuals and ways to show our praise for God, ways to  engage with Him in His Word. And so I love thinking about following the example of the good teacher and using visuals. And as you can tell, I use a lot of visuals  in what I'm talking about. So I have all these pictures for you to see while I'm 

teaching, instead of just my words, because I want you to follow along. So some ways, you can use visuals. For example, when you tell a child your voice is too  loud and you need to tone it down a little. Can you make that visual? Well, kids  are pretty familiar sometimes with a remote control or a volume button, and so  you can say, we're going to turn down the volume until your voice level matches  mine, and then that's our acceptable level. But by using that object, that visual  item, you've given them something to pay attention to that helps them to have a  connection to it and to know how to monitor that. So that can be really helpful. A  traffic light, again, I know I keep kind of coming back to this, but an interrupt.  When you tell kids to stop interrupting me, so often, kids are very confused  about what is an interrupt. And so someone described it to me as it's like a traffic lane. And so when I have a green light, it's my turn to use my words. That  means you have a red light, and your words are not coming right now and then  when the light changes, when you have a green light, then my words will stop,  so that we don't crash into each other, because when our words bump into each  other and cause a crash, that's an interrupt or an interruption. And so having a  talking traffic light so that you can have it on green or on red to indicate for the  children, right that their words are on red, right now, your words are on green.  You get to go so that you don't have a traffic interruption, right? So these kinds  of concepts, again, that idea of making time visual with a Time Timer or another  tool like that, and just the idea of, can you take pictures of things and show what it's like? So I always think about cleanup time and visuals are a huge help at  clean up time, when I've just instructed everyone to start to clean up and what  my version of clean looks like can be very different than what their version of  clean might look like depending on their mood and prerogative and what's  happening next. And so I've learned to just take a picture of what it looks like  when it's clean. In fact, I have also noticed that it can be helpful to have a picture of the item that goes in that place, and that really helps everybody to know what  goes there, what it looks like when it's all clean and put together. And in fact, I  had a church tell me, you know, this is really helpful for our hospitality team. We  have a coffee making station, and we're constantly trying to make sure that  people put things back in the correct places, and even know our processes. And so now they have pictures of this is where the coffee creamer is. This is where  the sugar is. This is how much coffee to put in. And it's amazing. The cupboards  have stayed organized, and everybody's excited now. So visuals help things  stay clean. And it can be really helpful. For a lot of us in children's ministry and  beyond. So these have just been a few different ideas, and you've heard from  Barb, you've heard from me about some ways that children and youth ministry  can take advantage of this idea of universal design for worship and being  prepared in advance, expecting that kids with varied abilities will need a little bit  of support in place, and here's some examples of supports you can use. So  coming up next, we are going to talk about Universal Design in our worship 

context, meaning our corporate worship settings. And I'm excited to talk with you more about that in the next segment you.



آخر تعديل: الاثنين، 20 أبريل 2026، 9:08 AM