MY PHILOSPHY!: I try and infuse 3 aspects into my worship:

1. Enthusiasm: make it fun & exciting to worship God

2. Education: teach them the significance of focusing on God, praise & thankfulness.

3. Expression: Help them to experience real God centered praise.

Attached and downloadable are some of my kids praise stuff- songbook, powerpoint slides & just plan fun stuff that I intermix with kids praise. The first draft I put out here is a little incomplete-sorry!-I will find time to do more editing, adding, copyright labels asap-I just wanted to throw at least something out there now than might be useful.

Here are some basic rules of thumb I use when doing Kids Praise:

• Prayer with the kids is always a part of my Kids Praise time. Sometimes I pray, sometimes I pray and the kids repeat the sentence, sometimes I call on one of the teachers to pray.
• Look at the words of the song and use it to share a spiritual truth. (spiritual truth should take NO LONGER than 30 sec to present!) Each week, I pick one song to remind them of a spiritual truth.
• Incorporate actions into songs. For a particular Sunday morning I usually ensure 30-40% of my songs have some kind of actions. Are you using a song that has no actions??? MAKE SOME UP?? Use your imagination. Enlist kids to help you develop some!! Half the fun I have with the kids is when they remember the actions they created and I forget! Gives them ownership into worship too eh?
• Encourage participation! Constantly look for ways for kids to involve themselves in praise. For example, during ALL of my action songs, I always pick some kids that know the actions and bring them up to the front to help me do the song AS THE PRAISE TEAM! I have also hooked in the older kids (you know, the grade 5-6 kids that think singing is for just the 'little kids') by approaching them, individually asking them to be on the official praise team, giving them a copy of the praise songs to work on at home (put their name on the front-really blows them away). Treat these older kids like a peer during worship.

Involve others: I have conscripted teens from the youth group to assist with the music, teachers from the Sunday School and boomers from the congregation that have musical talents but for one reason or another do not get a chance to use these talents. Look around and try and spread out ownership! Give others an opportunity to serve! Build some synergy then try and get yourself out of the limelight.