Danay Niles is the Childcare Director at the Well Community Church. With a growing community of young families and a significant number of small groups meeting weekly, the ability for families to bring their kids to these meetings is super important. Danay and a team of volunteers provide programming for kids ranging from pre-school through middle-school.
Many of the kids spend time in programming on the weekends as well as at least one weekday so it’s important to consider the content that they are presented with. It’s challenging to keep the attention of kiddos very long so Danay has identified some solutions that include changing content to keep children engaged.
Danay uses Playlister in childcare rooms during the week and weekend programming. Here are some tips she’s found that have helped her keep the content fresh.
Create templates for your playlists
The Well uses pre-built content that is scheduled to run every 8 weeks, they have been able to build out playlists to follow the same flow while swapping out videos from week to week. This keeps content fresh for the kids but helps volunteers to have an idea as to what is coming next.
Minute marker (5:17)
Manage transition times
Whether you’re running a class of 5 or a class of 30 kids, it’s important to consider how transitions will be handled from one activity to the next. Danay has taken this into consideration and has added countdown videos into each playlist to ensure that kids are aware of and have time to transition between activities. This helps to set expectations and the kids like the countdowns.
Minute marker (11:50)
Create decorative elements
Items on playlists have several options as far as settings are concerned. If you take the time to consider how the content should flow from one piece to the next, you can use some of the action controls to do some really cool things! One of those things, is setting an image on a timer to serve as signage before the actual programming starts rolling. Danay sets the screen to display a graphic related to the 8-week series that they’re running to display at the beginning and end of each class.
Minute marker (10:16)