How do you introduce a new ministry curriculum when you've used the same curriculum for over 20 years? A Kids 4 Truth carnival seemed to be our answer. We had early registration for about 4 weeks before club started, displaying club shirts, standards, and Truthbooks we would be using. During that time, we advertised our opening night carnival. For the carnival, we emphasized the importance of parents attending with their child(ren). The kids were getting more excited as opening night arrived. We had 25 carnival booths and a carnival store, including face painting, balloon animals and helium balloons. One of our leaders dressed up as a clown. Most of the booths were simple games using items on hand. Just for playing the game, the child would earn one carnival share. If the child won the game, more shares would be earned, based upon the difficulty of the game. The child could then shop at the carnival store with his shares, purchasing cool prizes.
The carnival lasted for about 1 1/2 hours. Then we moved into the church auditorium and had a 10-15 min. Gospel presentation. Our Director then explained how we were using the K4T curriculum to the parents. As parents left, everyone who had pre-registered were given packets containing their shirts, standards, Truthbooks, and a flyer of what their child needed to learn for club next week, and bookbags ordered. Those who hadn't registered yet were given the opportunity to register and received their standards, Truthbooks and flyers.
The children had a fantastic time and the parents left with information about our new ministry curriculum.