A TV in a kids’ room has four jobs on a Sunday: welcome the children, help tell the story, hold the memory verse and the song words, and tell parents when to come back. Here’s what to put up for each, and how to keep it to one job you do once a week.
Before kids arrive: the welcome and check-in
The first ten minutes are the busiest. Parents are signing children in, little ones are unsure, and nobody is reading anything long.
Put up one picture that says where they are and that they’re wanted:
- The room’s name and the ages it’s for, big enough to read from the door.
- A welcome line. “Welcome, little ones” does more than a paragraph of rules.
- For check-in screens: the room number and whether check-in is open.
Keep it to a few words per picture. If a parent can’t read it while holding a toddler’s hand, it has too much on it.
During the lesson: the story and the memory verse
Once the lesson starts, the screen is there to help the leader, not to compete with them.
The story. One picture per part of the story is enough. A title like “The lost sheep” and a simple image gives younger children something to point at, and gives the leader a place to start.
The memory verse. Give it its own picture: the verse in large type, the reference smaller underneath. Leave it up while the class says it together. Use the same picture in every room that week, so a child who moves rooms hears and sees the same words.
In a lesson, let the leader decide when to move on. In Displayte, a presentation that plays With the remote waits for the leader: right goes to the next picture, left goes back. The leader stays in charge of the pace.
Song words big enough for the back row
Children sing along to what they can read. Put each verse and chorus on its own picture, a few short lines each, in the largest type that fits.
Two habits help:
- Use plain, bold lettering on a calm background. Decorative fonts are hard for early readers.
- Check it from the back of the room, at a child’s height, before Sunday.
Play the music from your usual speaker, and move through the word slides with the remote as the song goes.
Pickup: what parents need to see
The last picture of the morning is for parents. They want three things: the time, the place, and anything they need to take home.
- “Pick-up starts at 11:15.”
- Which door to come to.
- One line about next week, if there’s something to know.
Put this picture last in the presentation, so it’s on screen as the service ends.
One presentation per Sunday, ready by Saturday
Everything above fits in one presentation for the whole kids’ wing: the welcome, the story, the verse, the songs and pickup, in the order you’ll use them. Make it once, give it to every kids’ room TV, and each room’s leader moves through it with the remote.
In Displayte, that’s how a Sunday works:
- On Presentations, choose New presentation. Give it this Sunday’s name and date, and choose With the remote, so each room’s leader moves it on.
- Choose its files with Choose from the Library, then drag them into the order you’ll use them in its editor.
- Tick every kids’ room TV, and choose Create presentation. If a room still has last week’s, take it off on Displays with Manage Multiple Displays.
- Each TV changes within a minute, and its card shows what it’s playing, so you can check every room from your phone.
For a room that shows the same thing every week, like a welcome loop in the hallway, make its presentation Always available, playing By itself, looping: it has no date, and each picture stays up for between 3 and 60 seconds.
The aim is a job that takes a few minutes on Saturday, so Sunday morning is for the children, not the screens.
You can see a Sunday in Kids set up this way, on its three kids’ room TVs, in the demo.