Children's

First Time Attending Kids

cshelton — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:36:53 GMT

I was just wondering if anyone has anything special you do to a child's nametag that specifies the child as a first time attending child? We were looking for a way for teacher's to be able to tell it was a child's first time just by looking at their nametag. Let me know if you have any ideas.

Thanks!

How do you track grade level?

cshelton — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:21:33 GMT

Hi,

My ministry leader is asking me to totally set up his rooms/locations for children's ministry by grade level for our grade school area. We only have 2 grade school rooms where currently our 1st - 3rd graders are in 1 room and our 4th and 5th graders are in the other room. Now he is thinking he wants to set up a room for each grade level. I am not sure I want to change our set up. I would like to know how other churches track grade level for grade school children.

Do you use attributes? Breakout groups? Let me know! Thanks!

cshelton

Back up plans for children's check-in when internet goes down

cshelton — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:47:43 GMT

Hi,

We had our internet go down right in the middle of our busiest check-in time this past Sunday. I would like to hear what other churches do as a backup plan if for some reason F1 check-in is unavailable.

Thanks,

Crystal Shelton

The Cove Church, Mooresville, NC

Best Set-up for Preschool

wstorey — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:47:29 GMT

I was hoping I could get some input both from fellow F1 users and also the admin staff about our Preschool set-up.

Currently we have the preschool children broken up into groups (ex. Turtle) by age, and then into one of two rooms per group (ex. Turtle A and Turtle B) so that the teachers are better able to teach. In the past we have broken those groups up according to age, but that has left us with instances where one teacher has 12 of the children and the other teacher may only have 3. Obviously we need a new plan.

I am thinking some breakout groups may be the best way to handle this, but wanted to get some input. Am I thinking in the right direction? How does your church handle this?

List of kids checked-in by room

cshelton — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 22:07:10 GMT

Hi,

A coordinator in our children's ministry asked me if we could get a list of all children checked-in to our children's program by room during each service so that in the event of an emergency, fire or something else, they could account for all the children checked-in to each room. I am sure there is probably a report that could be run to get this information but I would like to hear from other churches, what you do at each service to prepare for things like this. Do you print out a report for each classroom at each service? Which report do you use? All feedback is appreciated!

Thanks so much!

Anyone using F1 to manage Awana Awards?

jharney — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:16:47 GMT

How are you doing this?

Church that hosted breakout session on Check-in

cshelton — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:47:44 GMT

Hi,

I am looking for some information from the church, Bethlehem Baptist, that presented at the DC09 conference during a breakout session on Fellowship One Check-in. I was wondering if someone from there could send me information on the touch screens that they use for self-check-in.

Thank you in advance! Blessings!

Alphanumeric Boards for Paging

lfranklin — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:43:54 GMT

Does anyone know of a company that sells the digital alphanumeric boards so that we can display the security code in the service without having to display it on our worship screen? Many of the pager boards are numeric only and that doesn't work with the codes generated from check-in.

Childcare along with Adult Activities?

ehicks — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:58:13 GMT

I am just getting started at setting up Activities within F1 for our adults. For most of them, they have childcare provided. What is the best way to set up the childcare activity for each of these adult meeting? Should I add another activity/room under the same Group>Sub Group? Or should I do it seperately under the Children's Section?

ie: We have adult community groups under the "Community Group" Ministry selection drop down menu - should I put the childcare for that group in that same section, or should I change it to the "Children's Ministry" Ministry selection drop down menu???

Thanks!!!

Scheduling Volunteers to serve in Children's Ministry

cshelton — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:27:45 GMT

Hi,

We are currently redoing our children's volunteer scheduling in F1 and I am interested to know how other churches use F1 in scheduling their volunteers for this ministry. I am also interested in knowing what reports you run to give you a schedule to go by, to know who should be showing up to volunteer this weekend at each service. We are struggling with how to handle volunteers who can't be there to serve at their normal time. We need a way to plug in a substitute in the schedule for that weekend service time. Please let me know how your church handles situations like this in F1. Our staff has become dependent on excel spreadsheets for this instead of our F1 database that should be able to handle this.

Thanks for any insight you can provide!

Blessings,

cshelton

The Cove Church

Check-in Labels

TMazelin — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 22:41:00 GMT

Can anyone tell me where they order the labels for the zebra printers from? I've tried several sources and they are all out of stock of this particular label.

Thanks!

Grandparents and Kid's Check-in

charles.wallace — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 15:19:33 GMT

We are about to start using the Check-in System (Next Week) and had a quick question:

How do you all handle Grandparents who want to check in their grandchildren. We are planning on using the Automated check-in process (Self Check-in with Bar codes), however, since the Grandparents have their own records in F1 and are not tied to the kids records in anyway, the grandparent cannot use the self check-in. Is there anyway around this?

Children visiting with several families

rcurtiss — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:31:42 GMT

Does anyone have any advice on how to handle children that come with multipal families?

Example: Jimmy comes with Bob & Sally week one. Jimmy comes with Dan & Laura the next week. So now Jimmy is in there twice under 2 families, non of which are his actual parents.

Right now we have been merging the duplicates into the most recent family that brought them, but now are running into the issue that they come back with "Bob & Sally" and our check-in team creates them again.

I'm not sure if the answer is to leave the duplicates, (Keep in mind that we check-in around 40-50 "new/visiting" children each week) if we just leave these kids in each family they come with we'll have tons of duplicates.

I tried to find an answer, but non of them really answered the multipal family question. They recommending setting up new households for each of these kids, and that doesn't really solve the issue at check-in. The check-in team will either recreate them within the family they came with or the parent will get 2 receipts, one to pick up their children and then one for the visitor. This of course slows down the check-in time since they'll have to do it seperatly. ANY ADVICE PLEASE? =)

Thanks!

Rachel

Pagers/Cell Phones

JKoehler — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:33:04 GMT

I was wondering if anybody used cell phones as there way of paging parents? We use pagers wright now but we have lost so many we only have enough for our TinyZone. (0 - 2) They are expensive to replace so I am thinking about moving to cell phones. Your thoughts?

How does that work?

Upward Program and Online Registration

jcronin — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:52:42 GMT

Is there anyone who is currently doing online registration through F1 for any of the Upward programs? I am having some struggles with:

1. Getting the perfect report from F1 containing the necessary fields needed (closest I've come so far is M6017E)

2. Formatting this report into the csv file format that they require to upload into their software program.

I've tried to enlisted the help of Upwards' customer service, but they are trying to refer me to an outside service to do our online registration. I'm very happy doing this part through F1.

I would like to chat with anyone who has been through these steps.

Thanks!

E-mailing parents of all children who attend Sunday mornings

sengley — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:26:38 GMT

Hello,

I am wondering how other churches communicate via e-mail with parents of the children that attend Sunday morning Children's Ministry. We can use reports or run a query of all children with a participant assignment, but we want to send a group e-mail. Most of these children don't have e-mail addresses, and we want to contact the parents. How does your church handle this?

Thank you,
Sarah
Receptionist / F1 Champion at Summit View Church in Vancouver, WA

Moving assignments for Promotion Sunday

dconrad — Tue, 13 May 2008 23:35:54 GMT

Has anyone found a way to only move assignments for active participants? We have a crowded data base. I am two years into this position, and this is my second year of "promotion" (all the kids moving up a grade level). When researching the move assignment area, I have 500 names of kids with assignments in one grade level. But only 200 are active. Wish I could select assignments by RLC and status.

Key Tag Bar Code Vendors

Bob VanDerPloeg — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 15:51:44 GMT

Can anybody suggest a good vendor for bar code key tags?

one barcode per family or one per child

lfranklin — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:59:22 GMT

I have read that for check-in beta that if you have a barcode for a child then you can scan the barcode and it will fully check them in and print their name tag, if they already have a participation assignment. Is this true?

We've distributed our barcodes out to families and have put everyone in the entire family on one barcode because families did not want to keep up with each child's key tag. Most of our families have anywhere from 3 to 6 children and keeping up with that many key tags can be quite a hassle! However, it would also be awesome if the families can just scan their barcode and nametags/asset tags/parent receipt tags could print automatically (if they already have a participant assignment).

How do other churches handle key tags?

children visiting with families

Jen — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 17:44:20 GMT

I would like to know how others handle the following situation:

When a child comes to church with another family and is put under that family's household as a visitor, what seems to be the best way to obtain mailing/contact information on this visiting child? We like to send out letters to the parents of all children with a new check in status.

Also, is there a report that would list those families with visitors attached? This would be helpful to go back and clean up the data. Get their own contact information and set them up as thier own houshold.

Thanks!

Small Groups

sbanks — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 23:52:53 GMT

We use a large group/small group format for Children's Programming (3yrs-5th grade) We do not want to use the breakout group feature of F1, but instead would rather view the small groups in each room as induvidual rooms. Is anyone using F1 for small groups in this manner? If so, how do you assign visitors to the small groups? Also, in general how do you assign the children to the different groups?

Lists

Jshkoehler — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 19:46:09 GMT

I am trying to pull up a list of kids who attended a certain hour>

Names, addresses, birthdays etc.

Outreach Events

cmckinney — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 02:46:57 GMT

I'm always looking for unique ideas for outreach to children and families. What does your church do Spring/Summer/Fall/Winter to bring in the families in your communities?

Getting started

cmckinney — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 22:33:52 GMT

Since we're just getting started here... does anyone work in children's? If so, can you tell us a little bit about your church?

I'll go first, my church in the suburb's of Seattle, WA. Our worship services are about 800-1000 kids per week. We run classrooms, station based and concert style children's programs on Sunday's and Wednesday's.

Looking forward to meeting all of you.