The time spent with your Mission Friends each week is a sacred, appointed time to teach them about God and Jesus, about missions, how to pray for others, and much more. Planning well makes good use of this sacred time.

Tips for Planning a Mission Friends Monthly Unit

• Begin planning with prayer. God knows our preschoolers and our situations better than we do. Let God guide your thoughts and inform your decisions.
• Planning for the whole next month at one time gives you a grasp of the monthly unit as a whole. It also gives you time to gather needed items well in advance.
• Look through the materials for the month, both in Mission Friends Leader and the Mission Friends Leader Kit, to get a good picture of the whole month before getting down to specifics. Make note of activities that would work well for your group.
• Use the “Mission Friends Planning Sheet,” available at wmu.com/missionfriendsdownloads, to lay out the month at a glance. Check to see that your plans are balanced with a variety of activities that will cover all your preschoolers’ learning styles.
• Don’t hesitate to change a plan during the month. Often an activity will need to be moved to another week or a new idea will need to be added or something that was planned isn’t going to work out. My plan sheet often has arrows, stars, highlights, and extra notes that are added throughout the month. It is a bit of a mess to anyone else, but it keeps me on track.
• Plan four or five different activities for each hour-long session for threes and fours, and kindergarteners.
• Once you’ve chosen the activities for each week and read the suggestions for Group Time, make a list, by week, of materials you need to gather or prepare and any other needed reminders. When possible, prepare all the leader kit items at once and place pieces in file folders labeled and ready to use.
• Plan ahead for Helping Others activities to give preschoolers’ parents advance notice if they are asked to contribute items. Use the “Mission Friends Helping Others Activity Parent Note,” available at wmu.com/missionfriendsdownloads, to advise parents of the activity. Do any advance research on possible recipients of donations from a Helping Others activity early in your planning.
• Plan ahead to coordinate with the person who administers your WMU account to make copies of needed web resources.

It is well worth your time to have a solid plan. It alleviates stress on you and your co-leader. You know what comes next and all is in place. But leave room for spontaneity. Preschoolers can bring wonderful surprises to the group that you couldn’t have planned. The planned and the unplanned can all fit together wonderfully in the sacred space and time God gives us each week.

by Vivian Howell