Butcher Paper

My Wednesday night program begins at 6:30 PM.  My registration opens at 6:00 PM.  This leaves me with 30 minutes of time to occupy my early birds with.  And arrive early they do.  By 6:10 I have anywhere from 15-20 little ones already running around my sanctuary.

This leaves me with a slight problem.

What to do with those 30 minutes.  We all know that if we leave that many little ones with nothing organized to do that the sanctuary will quickly erupt into chaos.  And many nights, that can be exactly what happens.  However, I try my best to make sure that we have organized activities waiting on the kids from 6:00-6:30 PM.  This year on the 1st Wednesday of every month we are going to have Butcher Paper night!

If you work with kids butcher paper should be your new best friend.

This was a super simple and easy pre-service activity to set up.  I literally rolled out 3 long sheets of butcher paper, put crayons in bins, and let the kids have at it!  Kids love to color and express themselves and something about coloring on paper on the floor just makes everyone happy.

I usually greet kids and parents on arrival at our check-in point so when I walked into the sanctuary at 6:28 last night to get ready for the opening I saw happy kids and volunteers calmly coloring on the floor.

I'd call that a #KidsMin win.