Organizing your Nursery

How does your room set-up help parents, volunteers, and kids all feel at ease?

INFANTS AND CRAWLERS ROOM and 1- TO 2-YEAR-OLDS ROOM
~Organize your room by areas.  Keep like items together. You probably have a lot of bulky items for your infants and crawlers: cribs, swings, bouncers, high chairs, and chairs. Place bigger items on the perimeter of the room. Create one space in the middle of the room for toys and blankets. This helps avoid injury and shows parents you've got a plan to care for their children and nurture their faith.
~Keep the diaper station in view and stocked.  Have the area stocked with necessary supplies. Having these things available in the room assures parents that their kids are in good hands. Making necessary processes like diaper changing smoother means your volunteers will have more time to grow in kids' faith.


~Do a toy check.  Check that you don't have too many toys in the room. Either 1 year olds plus too many toys quickly equalls a disaster zone! Organize toys logically in baskets on shelves or bigger items on the floor. Parents see through the windows that you take care of the toys- and that communicates you'll take care of their kids, too. Take a look at the available toys in the room and see what you have that could be used as informal faith-building tools for stories and songs.
~Manage supplies well.  Try to keep supplies up to date in the room and this will help keep volunteers happy. Best of all, parents will see how central spiritual development is to your ministry. After all, you're not just babysitting.

Reminders:
~You don't need to have all of the toys out at once... maybe create stations or only pull a basket or 2 down at a time.
~The GH is a safe and fun place for kids to discover God. Let's do our best to make the most of every opportunity while we are with the kids to make sure we are doing these 3 things.
         *Safe: holding children safely, cleaning up toys so adults and kids don't have tripping hazards, changing and checking diapers, not taking children out of room, taking off shoes that might hurt little fingers, etc...
         *Fun: Interacting with kids on their level, engaging them, knowing their name, loving on them, etc...
         *Discover God: We aren't a babysitting service, we are a place for kids to grow. Let's sing songs with them, read them a story or play a game with them... anything that teaches them about Jesus' love, forgiveness, and character.

What other ways do you see that we can improve the nursery and time with the kids? Comment!