One-room Sunday school

I've probably mentioned this before, but wanted to pose it more formally as a discussion topic. What do you do about having different ages in one Sunday school classroom?

We used to gear the lesson toward school-aged children and have older kids be helpers and toddlers color quietly or play with blocks if they were unable to sit through the lesson. When we've tried to have an additional, more "active" lesson for the toddlers, it has been too disruptive for the older kids.

I was recently doing some brainstorming, and took a look at the current ages of the kids. The age break-down has changed a little bit. We now have (approximately): 5 teenagers, 8 school-aged kids (grades 2-6), 6 preschoolers (aged 3-6), 3 toddlers (1-2 years), and an infant. read more/-

We don't gear lessons towards teenagers as they have their own meetings, but in general all the groups are growing in number and it's not like we have just one toddler to entertain. We could do a full-fledged lesson with the preschoolers, maybe even including the 2 yr olds.

If we were able to find another room, how should we do a split? 6 and up? Readers and non-readers? What about the non-verbal kids?

And if not, how can we make the lessons accessible for everyone? Is there some way to sneak in more action for the toddlers and deeper questions for the older kids?


Current status...

We are sort of "on hiatus" with it being summer, but we still get 5-10 kids on a Sunday morning, and try to keep them entertained.

Today there were THREE of us with the kids, and we still could barely manage! A craft with the youngers, a game with the olders, cleaning up after the 3 yr old...oh no, the 2 yr old is unattended! There she goes...got her!

Even the board game we brought out was boring for the older set, and they got a bit antsy.

They're good kids, though...thank God for kids!