We do a “Kindergarten Welcome Wagon” event the Friday BEFORE promotion weekend.  We invite all incoming Kindergarteners (we do K5 - 5th Grade in our services) and their parents to a big Pizza Party with bounce houses and fellowship.  ALL of our Ministry Directors (Department Heads) in Kids Ministry and all of the Kindergarten teachers (weekend and mid-week) are required to attend.  Once we’ve had a time of hanging out, we make a big announcement that we are going to have all the parents become kids for the night.  We run through the whole Weekend Service experience for the kids with parents.  

We line them up, bring them into the SLAMatorium, do the pre-service hype, then kick off with our SLAM Video Intro and a couple of praise songs.  A crazy character comes out and talks about how awesome SLAM is and how excited they are to have the Kindergarteners move up this coming week.  We tell them that they will get a special prize on their first weekend service.  

Then, I bring up each teacher and Ministry Director and introduce them to all the kids and parents.  We tell the parents about our Email, text messaging service, and Facebook page so they can always be informed about everything happening in Kids Ministry.

Finally, we do a Q&A with parents to make sure we have given them all the info they need to get their child started off right.

At the conclusion, I invite the families to tour the building.  Each teacher is in their room so that the parents and kids can see the room their child will be in and also meet the teachers. It’s a cool night!

OH, almost forgot.  I also use that time to let the parents know that the only way we are able to have such a strong ministry is because we have a strong team.  I let them know of areas they can be involved as well.  This year, we ended up recruiting almost a dozen new volunteers just from that night alone.  🙂

It’s a very cool event!