Involving Families in Mission Friends at Home
The power of parental involvement in preschoolers’ spiritual development cannot be overstated. Since parents/guardians don’t usually attend Mission Friends alongside their preschoolers, you have the opportunity to equip parents to engage their preschoolers with missions learning, activities, and prayer at home.
Mission Friends Leader — the missions discipleship curriculum for preschoolers — includes teaching tools to give to parents so they can extend missions learning at home throughout each month.
In each issue of Mission Friends Leader you’ll find
- “Mission Friends at Home” for older preschoolers (monthly)
- “Mission Friends at Home for Babies, Ones, and Twos” for younger preschoolers (quarterly), and
- “Families on Mission Calendar” for all preschoolers (monthly).
These teaching tools allow you to team up with parents in teaching their preschoolers about missions. Preschoolers and their parents can learn about missions, pray for missions, give to missions, and do missions and tell others about Jesus together!
Get the most out of “Mission Friends at Home” with the following tips and ideas!
Using “Mission Friends at Home”
Distribute “Mission Friends at Home” to preschoolers and their families.
- Make copies of “Mission Friends at Home” from Mission Friends Leader each month for the number of preschoolers in your Mission Friends. Be sure to copy the Families on Mission Calendar on the back.
- Send this home with preschoolers at the beginning of the month. This helps parents know what their preschooler is learning in Mission Friends, and gives ideas to continue learning and praying at home.
- Mail a copy to a preschooler who is absent.
- Give a copy to preschoolers who attend Sunday School or life groups on Sunday mornings, but do not attend Mission Friends. Add a note with the day and time of your Mission Friends class.
Give parents ideas for using “Mission Friends at Home” with their preschoolers.
Share one of the following ideas by placing sticky notes on their copies or sending a text message to encourage them to use “Mission Friends at Home.”
- Place on your refrigerator this month.
- Read one sentence about the missionary each night as part of your preschooler’s bedtime routine.
- Each day, show the photo and tell one thing about the missionary.
- Say a sentence prayer for the missionary every day.
- Choose at least one activity each week from the Families on Mission Calendar.
- Place “Mission Friends at Home” in your preschooler’s car booster seat.
- Repeat a favorite activity from “Mission Friends at Home.” Preschoolers learn through repetition.
- Look at the photo with your preschooler and ask him or her to tell one thing the missionary does to tell others about Jesus.
Using “Mission Friends at Home for Babies, Ones, and Twos”
Include younger preschoolers by sending home a copy of the quarterly “Mission Friends at Home for Babies, Ones, and Twos.”
- Make copies of “Mission Friends at Home for Babies, Ones, and Twos.”
- Send this home at the start of each quarter.
- Touch base with parents at the beginning of every month, letting them know about the featured missionaries.
- Text or send a sticky note home each month sharing a simple prayer request or interesting and age-appropriate missionary fact parents can share with a baby, one, or two.
Joye Smith is the WMU preschool ministry consultant.
