All right, I am Mrs. Pantaleo. Brandy Pantaleo. I've been teaching our tiny tots, our twos and threes, for 10 years now. During the school year, during the school week, I teach high school students, I teach college students. Twos and threes are a nice change of pace for me. I love them to death. I am not an elementary teacher. I don't know how they do it. Eight hours a day, five days a week. If that is you, you are a blessing to us parents. But I love my twos and threes for Sunday school. They're so much fun. They come in barely talking, barely walking. And when they leave, they're like, see ya. Full vocabularies. They come in not being able to say Pantaleo. They, I run into them at church and they're yelling, paula lay out, across the auditorium. It's just so much fun. I love it. They're, they're a blessing. And having a tiny tot Sunday school is a blessing to the parents. I'm not sure we want twos and threes in the church auditorium for two, three hours in a row. So we're going to talk through some different things that I do, some different things that the fours and fives Sunday school do, and hopefully it'll be a help to you this hour. First thing we're going to discuss is curriculum. I don't know if you've gone and Googled Sunday School Curriculum for Tiny Tots. It's like, what do you want to do? I'm like, Baptist Church, KJV, and there's still like 60 options out there. So what we found and what we've been using the past 10-12 years is the Joyful Life Sunday School Curriculum. It's typically a two-year rotation. It's very conservative. It's KJV based. The cards are pretty. They're bright. They're colorful. The students love them. They come with papers to go home, craft books, and a character story, which I love. It's Mitten and Boots. They're the most adorable things. They get in a bit of trouble here and there. But it's a lot of fun. I grabbed one. So you could just see it. This one is walking through the Jordan River. It's nice and bright, and the kids love it. They love being my helpers, seeing the cards. Sometimes you have one of them on your lap because we're struggling to sit still. The pictures are on the back, too, so you can see what's going on, and you can point as well. And then it's on a two-year rotation. So if you have twos and threes in the same classroom like I do, they're not seeing the same crafts and the same story cards both years. So one of the things that's really important is that your curriculum teaches the stories of the Bible. Typically, in our Sunday schools, by the time our students graduate sixth grade, they've gone through the Old Testament and the New Testament about twice, the major Bible stories. And that starts in twos and threes. We literally, it's just Bible story after Bible story after Bible story that we look at and we're like, oh, we know these. But we had to learn them somewhere. And it starts with the twos and threes. And they love the Bible stories. Something else that Joyful Life does is at Easter they give me four to five Easter lessons. You start with, it can start with Jesus going toward Jerusalem, Jesus riding on the donkey. We touch on his crucifixion, why he died. Nothing is innately explicit. Twos and threes don't really need to know the inner workings of the crucifixion. We don't want to damage their minds yet. But the emphasis is Jesus died for our sins. And that's really important. Typically, my twos and threes aren't getting saved in Sunday school. They haven't reached that age of accountability. They don't fully understand. But they're learning the stories now so that when they get to the age where they do understand, they know the history, they understand why we believe what we believe, and they can make those decisions for Christ at a young age. Typically there's one Missions Conference lesson. It's kind of like a standalone, but it's great when we're coming up on Missions Conference. They love singing Be a Missionary every day. And we talk about missions and why we do missions. There's a Thanksgiving lesson. I kind of cheat on the Thanksgiving lesson. I typically do it like two Sundays before Thanksgiving because a lot of times you don't have your children there on Thanksgiving and we're building to it. So I will teach them that lesson a little bit early so we can talk about it. And then the parents get the story paper home and they can talk about it as we come up on Thanksgiving. And then I get five Christmas lessons. The kids love Christmas. I love Christmas. I love Christmas break. But we start with, and it's different both years, the angel coming to Mary, Joseph, an angel coming to Joseph, them traveling to Bethlehem, the shepherds, and then the wise men coming a little bit later. And the kids get to learn the Christmas story. They get to sing the Christmas songs. It's an exciting time of year for them. And the more excited I am, The more excited they are. The curriculum has several themes. And it's really, the themes are really important for the twos and threes. And the themes that are in my Bible stories are repeated in the character story for the day. So if we're talking about God provides for us, God provides for us. Obey. So they see it in a couple of different storylines. This might be about obeying God and this may line up with obey your parents because obeying our parents is obeying God. And that's the authority in front of them. One of the first themes is God loves you. It's really important for kids to learn that God loves them. Some religions teach that kind of God is a judge, and he is, but that he's almost looking for you to do something wrong so he can punish you and judge you. Our God loves the children. He loved them so much that he sent Jesus to die for their sins. And they're learning that Jesus came for them. individually, not collectively, but you know, Jesus died for Anna and Silas and Lydia. Jesus died for Mrs. Ponaleo because he loved us that much. And I kind of get excited when they start realizing I'm special, not just to my parents, but to the God that made me. Kind of important here. Obey your parents and your teachers. Some of our kids are in school or daycares, so they do put in the make sure you obey your teachers as well, which is nice. And Mrs. Pantaleo tells you to take your feet off the table. Hopefully you're taking your feet off the table. Another really important lesson. Be kind to others. I call my students friends. They're all friends in our class. So we have to be kind to our friends. But I don't like they're still your friend. We're going to be nice to our friends. We're going to be nice to our siblings, our brothers and sisters. Sometimes you have those in your class. That's fun. That's a different dynamic. But we need to be kind because that's a Bible principle. And it's something we're going to work on, you know, not taking a toy from someone else, not bashing them with the Hot Wheels car. We're going to be kind. God provides for us. Can you think of any Bible stories where God provided for the people? We talk about the children of Israel in the wilderness. What else? Anyone else? the feeding of the 5,000, God providing for Elijah, God providing for the widows. There's a couple of different stories there. So we talk about all those stories and how God took care of them. And if God took care of them, who else is he going to take care of? He's going to take care of us. And little kids have big problems to them. Sometimes it's the boo-boo they came in with. Sometimes it's the fact that Mommy and Daddy left them in Sunday school with Mrs. Ponaleo, and they want to be with Mommy and Daddy. But guess what? God's going to take care of you. He's here with us, and Mommy and Daddy are coming back. It's always really nice when that Bible story lands on the day that you really, really, really need it. And we're talking about God taking care of us. And the Mitten and Boots story is kind of aligned with this. At one of the stories, there's a thunderstorm. And Mitten is terrified of the thunderstorm. But you know what? God keeps her family safe and takes care of them, just like he takes care of us. We may not have huge thunderstorms up here, but snowstorms. My daughter the other day was terrified. It was lightning and thundering outside and she had a little plastic baby doll she was carrying and she didn't want to go to the car because she was afraid lightning was going to hit her baby doll. No, that's not how that works, number one, but God keeps us safe and if that baby doll is important to you while you walk to the car, God's not going to let the lightning strike your plastic baby doll. And one of the final lesson you see in your curriculum is sharing the gospel with others. We even teach them in twos and threes that we share that God loves us with others. Sometimes that's the bus ministry. Sometimes that's giving a track or telling a family or inviting a family in your neighborhood to church with you. And those are stories that align with the character stories in the Bible. And they're really excited when they have a neighbor friend in the class with them. Or they're able to invite a neighbor to something like VBS. They're always super excited to bring them with them. Because you know what? Min and Bits did it in their story, and I got to do it too. Anything you can do to make big kids big kids, they love. All right. Schedule. Schedules are always fun and tiny tots. I typically run my class on a schedule, but they are two and threes, so we typically have to be fairly flexible. You're never quite sure what's going to happen from one minute to the next with the twos and threes. All right, do you have a plan? And do you have an assistant? Because with twos and threes and fours and fives, you kind of need an assistant, because you never know. What's going to happen? My assistants are typically great. Most of the time they're a college student. If there's a bathroom emergency or the other, last year I had someone running and fell and there's one corner, one sharp corner in the classroom you can hit. In the entire classroom and guess what? They nailed the one sharp corner in my entire classroom and we had to go get mom because they were just, They weren't bleeding, praise the Lord. They weren't bleeding, but it was like, that you could see the bruise forming. And they were crying and they just, sometimes they just need mom. Mom's got that kiss that solves all of the world's problems. So your assistant can help with that. Childminding, helping that new two-year-old learn how to sit still. Lately it's some, I have one that likes to put his foot up on the table while I'm teaching. I know his parents and I know that boy does not put his feet on the table at home, but he loves to put his feet on the table. So they're there to help me make sure he learns to keep his feet on the floor and to keep quiet feet. We can help with craft time. If we have separation anxiety, sometimes having a helper, dealing with a child that's just bawling and calming them down while I'm dealing with the other ones, it's really helpful. My largest Sunday school was a few years ago and it was about 12. So if you have one screaming, who's going to deal with the other 11? And then if we have a discipline issue, it happens on occasion, I typically use time out with my students. We don't put hands on. Or sometimes we have to go and get a parent if the child just refuses to comply. So having that assistant is really, really, really beneficial. What do we do about arrival? Usually at arrival, I have several activities planned out. They can color, although my two only color for about 30 seconds and they're done. especially the boys, they're like, all done. So you have to have other activities, whether that's books or puzzles, getting them at the table, getting them calm and quiet. As they arrive, you're kind of making sure they have several things done. Visitors, you have it in your packet. There's an all about me form. We want them to fill out. So we have a cell phone number if we need to text a parent. Sometimes it's hard on the campus to find the parent. Where are they sitting in church? We can text them if the child's having an issue. If there's any food allergies, we don't want to give them goldfish if they're allergic to goldfish. Goldfish are typically safe. But peanuts, occasionally I've had a visitor parent come in and hand me an EpiPen. So what are we allergic to? Because if I can smell peanut butter on one of my kids, that's what they had for breakfast. We may not want the visitor with the EpiPen in the classroom. any special instructions, and then who's allowed to pick them up. We really, really, really need to know who's allowed to pick them up. We don't want any random person picking up, especially a visitor, because you're not always sure between people changing out as workers who's going to pick them up. So have them fill out this form. I like these on cardstock. because we keep them in a folder behind the door, and it's really easy to keep your hands on. The other loose paper I gave you was a tiny top stick policy. We don't want sick kiddos in our classroom. I have some kids that have four siblings, so if one goes home sick, all of them are going to get sick, and it's going to sort through the family. I have a couple of kiddos that have preemie siblings at home. We need to be careful and protect the families. I'm not trying to exclude a child from my Sunday school class, not at all, not whatsoever. We want them there, but not at the cost of the health of other people. Does that make sense? So if someone shows up and they're coughing really hard, not to be disgusting, but it's green, You know what I mean? Or you touch them, and they're burning up. Sometimes you can see it in their eyes. They're glassy. They don't feel well. We have a room upstairs that we call the crow's nest. It's got glass. It's got a speaker. The parents can hear the service that's going on down below. And usually, I hand them some crayons, the coloring pages from the day, a couple of Hot Wheels, or a baby doll. I can lie still when they bring it back. and give them an opportunity to stay and watch the service and give them things for their kiddo to do, but we just can't have the kiddo in the classroom. If it's something where we would say in a school class they could not come in, it's the same thing. Pink eye, because that spreads like wildfire. COVID, anything that's just contagious. So we want to protect our kids. We want our kids to come back. And we've had issues over the years where parents have been bringing their kid to Sunday school, they get sick, so they pull their kid from Sunday school altogether. And we don't want that. We want the whole family there. We want the children there so we can minister to them. So yes, I hate it when one of my tiny tots misses a Sunday because they're sick. But we've got to protect everyone that's in there. Does that make sense? So activities, fun stuff for them to do, but typically quiet activities, because when we get started, I don't want a ton of craziness. It happens sometimes, but we're trying. What do I do at the beginning of class? I take attendance. We have little forms we check the names off on. I collect their offering. They love it when they bring a couple of pennies or a quarter. I think they enjoy the change more than the dollar bills. So we have a little bucket they get to put their offering in themselves. And then we pray. They may have prayer requests. Depends on the age group. The fours and fives typically have more progress. Please pray that my birthday goes well. I think for two years my daughter asked. Please pray that my parents will get me a puppy. She still doesn't have a puppy. Probably not the Lord's will if the prayer hasn't been answered, but they care. Pray for a sick sibling, pray for my parents. They have prayer requests that are really, really important to them. And learning to take those to the Lord. And we talk about prayer, that's one of the things we discuss. And then the next thing is super, super important. Bathroom break. Fours and fives tend to take a bathroom break pretty quickly after they get to Sunday school. That way we can sit down and do the story. Same thing with the twos and threes if they're potty trained. Half my class is potty trained right now so again having that assistant is really helpful. My classroom's upstairs and the only bathroom accessible is downstairs, so having that extra pair of hands to make sure the kids don't just throw themselves down the stairs is really helpful. I had one a couple of years ago that his fastest way down the stairs is literally just to kind of chunk himself down the stairs, so you had to have hands on him at all times. Twos and threes. You love them, you really do, but sometimes you wonder what's going on in their brains. And then we come back and we do song time. Typically, we're teaching them the songs just through rote doing them. They can't read. I can't hold up flashcards with the words of the songs on them. I gave you a songbook. These are 15 or so of our favorite songs to sing. Just because sometimes we get in that habit. We sing the same three songs every class period. And you need something new. So I kind of keep this tucked in my Bible because it helps me think of a song when I'm If we sing Be Careful Little Eyes One More Time, Mrs. Ponaleo is going to lose her mind. So what song can I come up with? What new song can I teach them that they should know for maybe going into the fours and fives? And they pick up on them so fast. Their brains are amazing. They pick up on them so, so quickly. So two or three songs. Typically that last song, that third song we do, it's a quiet song. Jesus loves me. Jesus loves the little children. Something without a whole lot of activity. So as we're sitting at the table, we're bringing their energy down. Because when we get to the next part, which is Bible story time, we'll go over the Bible verse, then we do the Bible story. I need watching eyes, and listening ears, and hands that are kept to ourselves. And if I can get them calm after song time, and we can get into Bible story time, for me that's really important. Because why did we come to Sunday school? It's Bible story time. We want them to be able to listen to the flashcards, listen to the story. I love these. When I'm prepping the Bible story, let me find the first card, it tells me the book of the Bible and the chapters on the back. So I get to read that and learn more about the story for me. And that helps me tell it better. But it also gives me the story broken down for them in their vocabulary. So I can read it if I need to to them and tell them the story. It's typically three or four cards. This one's four. And then it gives me review questions for them. I do look over these in advance. So as we're going through the story, I'll ask them the question. They repeat it. And then when we get to the end, we go over the questions again. A lot of them, their parents pick them up and go, what did you talk about today? Ruth. The Jordan River. Not Ruth. Ruth was like four weeks ago. But we're trying. We're getting there. At least they remember Ruth from four weeks ago. The story papers go home with them so mom and dad can go over the Bible story, the character story with them again and help them remember what we've gone over. Sometimes it's they were reading the Bible book Ruth during quiet activities at the beginning and that's what they have fixated on, but the parents get the Bible story as well. My kids loved rereading those all week long. You'd find my daughter in her bedroom with her story paper, telling it to her stuffedies. So sending those home is a really good way for the kids to connect with the story all week. Then we do song time again. Those of you that have worked with twos and threes and fours and fives, you know these kids' attention spans about this big. Maybe five minutes. So that's why it's song time. And then we sit down and I kind of reset their attention span and do Bible time. And then we stand up and we do, I may never march in the Lord's army. They love to wear a sombrero, eat a taco. They love I'm in right, out right, up right, down right. Or would your Bible pray every day because they want to lay on the floor. And then they want to stand on their tiptoes and see how tall they are next to Mrs. Pantaleo. And then they're back on the floor. They love the activity songs. And we're resetting their attention. Because I'm about to ask them to come back to the table and do their craft page. That could be coloring a picture. They love the ones that have stickers. on them. I kind of love stickers too, so we have fun with the stickers. It could be they're gluing cotton balls on that really fluffy lamb they're making. On occasion, there's glitter involved. Glitter glue is a lifesaver. They want to make Esther's crown and wear the crown Esther wore when she became queen. So there's all kinds of fun craft activities for them to do. Then we get to the character story. That's the Mitten and Boots lesson. Did Boots follow instructions when he was told to clean up his room? If he didn't, he can't go to the hardware store with Daddy, so he's learning there's consequences for not obeying. Mitten was not nice to her brother, so she has to sit at a chair in the kitchen table while Mom makes dinner and she can't help. There's consequences for not being nice to our friends. We have to do what's right. And that makes our mommies and daddies happy. And more importantly, that makes God happy. And they're learning the character story that kind of matches with the Bible lesson that we taught them. So we talk through the character story. Sometimes there's a truth down here or there can be questions you can ask them as well to help remind them what they've learned about. The Mitten and Boots story is on the back of the flyer they get to go home with as well. And then the most important part according to them is snack time. They love their pretzels, They're goldfish, they're animal crackers. Typically, we give them a small snack. We don't want them to go home and not eat lunch. So if you give them all the goldfish they can want, and some of them will eat half the box, they're not gonna eat their lunch. It's just a little snack to hold them over. Some parents will provide a snack, especially if their child has allergies. Make sure the right child gets the right snack. Fours and fives don't usually do a snack, but I know some Sunday school teachers that do because if their kids are anything like my kids, they are always hungry. I know my daughter at school, her lunchtime is 1110 and on Sundays we don't get lunch until about one o'clock. So by the time church is over you can literally sit next to her in church and hear her stomach start growling because she's like, I need food now. So helping them make it to lunchtime. Then we do another bathroom. They're twos and threes, especially when they're potty training. We need lots of bathroom breaks so we don't have lots of accidents. And then in Tiny Tots, we have playtime. That can be quiet playtime with Play-Doh at the table, or puzzles, or the floor mats that come out for the Hot Wheels cars. The 4th and 5th Sunday School doesn't do playtime per se, but they do a review game, a Bible verse race, or Bible drills where they're having fun doing an activity to remind them of what they learned in class that day. Our Tiny Tots class does not end at the end of Sunday school. It goes on into the AM service because it functions more like a nursery at that point. I will leave the story cards because a lot of the AM workers like to tell the Bible story again, but it's not as organized as a Sunday school is going to be. We've pretty much burned their attention span. We've gotten everything we can get out of them. They do need that time to play. You're going to find yourself frustrated if you sit down and try to tell them a 15-minute missionary story. Most of them are just not capable of that at this point. So they love to play. They love the Hot Wheels cars. The girls love the baby dolls, the kitchen. We have racetracks that they run down. A lot of people will donate toys for your tiny tots ministry. Side note on the toys, do kind of keep an eye on what comes in. Some things look like they came from the early 80s with the lead, paint, and everything. And in tiny tots, anything that can fit through a toilet paper tube, it might be too small if you have a child that puts things, you don't want to have to dig a Hot Wheels car out of the back of someone's mouth. Or the little people that used to be really, really skinny. So be careful about what you have as toys in your tiny tots room. We want to keep the kids safe. But a lot of parents are more than willing to donate their kids' leftover toys as they grow up. And that's kind of how you stock some of the toys in your tiny tots classroom. The final part of my tiny tots day is dismissal. So our fours and fives Sunday school meets in this classroom back here. And what they do to make sure the right kid gets to the right parent is they walk them across the parking lot to the church auditorium, and they keep them in the lobby until the parents show up, and the parents come and get the kids from them. We're not just turning the fours and fives loose into the church. Who knows what would happen? We might find someone hanging from the steeple. There are a couple that, you know, might vanish. So make sure they get to the parent. In my tiny classroom, the parents come to us, and they come and retrieve the child. So we're making sure the right kid gets with. the right parent or the aunt or the uncle or the older sibling that's approved to come and pick them up. Typically, I'm not releasing a three-year-old to their four-year-old sister because we have stairs, we have all kinds, the doors, the exit doors right there. We want to make sure that they get home safely. Once we dismiss, we're sanitizing the tables, we're taking out the trash. Please take out the trash. You never know what you're going to come back and find the next day. So we're working through just trying to make sure it's clean and ready for the next service. All right. I have two minutes left. Do I have any questions? I love my tiny. They're so much fun. That clock's not right. All right. I'll hang around for a moment if you have any questions. Have a great day.