Monday, November 3, 2008

God’s Helping Hands Chart





Who are God’s helpers? It’s easy to see with the cheerful show of hands on this chart. Having a God’s Helper Chart encourages teamwork and self-esteem as students take responsibility for their classroom. This also builds community and dependability and it could also get the children to help more around the house as well.

The easiest way to get students to help you tidy up and organize your classroom each Sunday is give each child a job to do. Give children a new job assignment (every month or every day, which ever seems to work best with your students so they don’t get bored) and keep track on a class list on your computer. Have a few minutes at the end of the day for “God’s Helping Hands” so the students can do their jobs (some will have two children doing a big job together). Assign jobs carefully and if the job takes more than one student, make sure those students work well together. Be sure to show the students how to do each job correctly to avoid confusion. Look around your room to see what kinds of things need to be done each time your class meets that your students can help with. Your students can probably suggest some jobs, too!

You can buy Helping Hands charts or you can easily make one for your class. Just make small handprints on various colors of card stock and put the names of your students on each one. Laminate or cover with clear contact paper to make them last. Cover a bulletin board with paper and trim all around where you want the chart with bulletin board boarder. Make a “God’s Helping Hands” title and post on the top part of the chart. Identify what you want the student to do on white card stock (or a white index card) with a picture beside it. Pictures can be found at Google. Type in the word and click on images. Or you can cut up catalogs or magazines for pictures. Or use these picture cards. Laminate or cover cards with clear contact paper to make them last. Keep extra cards in an envelope and post under God’s Helping Hands chart. You can also make this chart on material so it will be portable if needed. Cards can be attached to the chart using Velcro.


Class jobs could include:

Line Leader
Board Eraser
Messenger
Scrap Monsters (to pick up scraps of paper off the floor which is a good job for active students)
Library Helper
Pencil Sharpener
Substitute Helper (they do the jobs of the absent students)
Supply Manager (they put away glue, crayons, scissors, etc.)
Shelf Manager (makes sure all shelves are clean and orderly)
Paper Passer (they pass out any papers in class)


What jobs can you think up for your students to do in class?





5 comments:

Unknown said...

This is a good idea! Not so much for my older kids, although they could help with a few things, but for the younger groups. I'll have to see if the other teachers are interested.

I can't think of any other jobs. I think you covered pretty much everything. :) The Scrap Monster would be the big job for us. LOL

Amazing_Grace said...

Debbie-
You think this chart will work with my hubby? LOL!

Rebecca said...

They do something very similar to this at Bug's school and it is so great. The kids all seem to love having their jobs. Every Monday Big comes home and tells me what his job for the week is. I love the idea of using this in Sunday School as well.

I love the link with the printable picture cards! I am definitely going to use that as we can always use new pictures for our picture sschedule - thanks!

Amazing_Grace said...

Rebecca-
Yeah, this is neat and it would be great for home use as well! LOL!

Here are some more free picture cards:

Free picture cards

http://www.angelfire.com/pa5/as/asteachersites.html

http://trainland.tripod.com/pecs.htm

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art45171.asp

Rebecca said...

Oh thank you! You so rock with all these great links!