Ministry with Children

Teens and video games

The Pew Internet & American Life Project just released a new study in which:

The first national survey of its kind finds that virtually all American teens play computer, console, or cell phone games and that the gaming experience is rich and varied, with a significant amount of social interaction and potential for civic engagement

Access, analyze, act

PBS has put together a pretty cool interactive website to help youth learn about civic engagement and social media. It's chock full of lesson plans, exercises, and really useful resources.

Using multimedia tools with youth

Here's a great, concise, guide to ways to use multimedia tools with youth.

Teaching tips for kids with special needs

Here's a comprehensive list of useful sites for teaching kids with various kinds of special needs. While it's not oriented towards religious educators, it's still very useful in that context, too.

Teens and technology

Here's a fascinating weblog post by the ShapingYouth blog that is dense with interesting links off to resources on teens and technology.

Youth and social networking

Here's a great list of articles that have influenced TimBoyd's thoughts about social networking -- they should influence ours, as well.

Excellent children's ministry

Here's a little "pick-me-up" that might help remind you how to keep moving from "good to great" in your children's ministries.

Reaching out to young people

Here's a great free handbook on how to reach young voters -- and of course, much of the advice is relevant more generally, in reaching out to young people. Points like "talk about relevant issues," "reduce the rhetoric," "be real," "treat them with respect," and "just do it." Imagine what could happen if we followed this advice in communities of faith!

iCan resources for congregations

The interfaith children's advocacy network has free resources available for helping congregations work on awareness of child abuse, and prevention.

Kids will be kids...

Rich Melheim's blog made me smile! He included these two quotes:

"Our youth today love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect for older people. Children nowadays are tyrrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyranize their teachers." - Socrates, 425 B.C. "Our earth is degenerate in these latter days, bribery and corruption are common, children no longer obey their parents; everyone wants to write a book!" - (From a 4,700 year-old Assyrian Tablet)