A couple of weeks ago I helped lead Day Camp @Home. Normally Day Camp is held outdoors on a local property. Primary school aged children and leaders spend 4 days outdoors building gunyahs (shelters), cooking, doing craft, playing games etc. This year due to COVID-19 we ran Day Camp differently. Each family received a pack with activities to do at home and there was a morning online assembly as well as an afternoon Zoom session.
We’ve also started running a monthly Kids Time on Zoom before our main church service.
This post will contain some of the ideas we’ve used along with some other ideas. When planning zoom sessions for children the idea is to make them interactive and engaging. To help keep everyone safe use a password on zoom and only give the link to those who have registered to participate.
Previously I’ve share about using Zoom with birthdays.
Online Rules or Behaviour Suggestions for Zoom with children
Below are some suggestions for online behaviour expectations:
- Have everyone muted except the person talking
- Have children rename as their name, so you know who’s who.
- Suggest children raise their hand or use the thumbs up reaction if they want to add to the conversation
- Suggest to children they can ask questions or put comments in the chat
- Request an adult be present with the children to help with any tech issues or to help keep the children engaged.
Using Breakout Rooms
Ensure that there is at least 2 leaders in each break-out room. You can manually assign people to rooms. Breakout rooms are good for small group discussion or to allow children to share what they’ve been doing. Usually everyone can have their mics on when using break-out rooms, so that they can participate in the conversation.
For our kids time before zoom church there is only a small group so the kids & leaders are put into a breakout room. This way they just return to the main room for church and we can monitor who is going into the room. Other people can still enter before church and chat in the main room without disturbing the kids time.
Asking Questions children can respond with actions
As it can be hard to have a number of children answering a question in a larger zoom group you can try using closed questions with an action to answer the question. This way you can still have interaction but it is more controlled and children get to move around and participate. For example, If this is first Day Camp give us a wave or put your hands on your head if been to Day Camp before.
We used this idea mainly at the beginning of each Day Camp Zoom session to explore what children had done for the day.
Playing Games on Zoom with Children
We used a different game each day to try and match the theme for the day. Many games can be adapted for online. There are lots of ideas for Zoom games for kids or everyone.
Eye-spy
Played just like eye-spy but choosing something that you can see on someone else’s screen.
Guess the Sound
Play a variety of sounds that participants can guess. They can put their guess in the chat or put their hand up to answer.
Hide and Seek
A leader turns off their camera & moves with their device to “hide” in any part of their house. They then turn their camera back on and children guess where they’re hiding.
Scavenger Hunt
Give clues and a time limit. Children then go and find objects to match the clue. You could do this one clue at a time or a few at once. You can get children to show their objects on the screen and discuss them if you like. At the end remind children to put all the objects away.
Singing and Dancing
Have prerecorded music that one leader shares whilst everyone else can sing & dance. Need to make sure that only the leader sharing is unmuted. For Day Camp we had permission from the artists to use their music. For Church we have a CCLi streaming licence and pre-record songs with members of the church. Please be aware of copyright issues.
You could also just sing unaccompanied. Run through the actions with children before starting. Make sure children have a clear space around them so they don’t trip on anything when dancing.
More Ideas for Zoom with Children
There are many ideas for engaging children online. Including:
- Tell a story with or without visuals (if using a picture book, be aware of copyright issues).
- Get children do actions when telling a story or when they hear certain words
- simple crafts – You can either tell the children before hand what they need or drop off crafts to the children. For example making paper planes come with a piece of paper and pencils for decorating.
- Bring an object that matches the theme. Recently on an online conference we were invited to bring a plant, flowers or a piece of fruit which were used during the session.
- Use PowerPoint or share images.
- Use the whiteboard on Zoom for drawing, participants can add to this as well.
- Keep sessions short, no more than 30-40 mins. Have a number of different activities in each session to keep engagement.
- If children are part of a longer or multi-age session ask them to listen out for a particular word. For example shine a torch every time you hear the word light, or count the number of times you hear the word bread in the reading. It’s also okay for children to play near by, you’ll be surprised what they pick up just by being in the room.
If you’re starting to meet in person with children, here’s a comprehensive list of Kids’ Games for Social Distancing.
What ideas have you found useful for engaging children with Zoom?