Experiential teaching can be a wonderful way to engage children that do not respond to typical talking/listening methodology.
Just a few weeks ago, we were trying to teach the difficult idea that we can be changed when we are “filled with the Holy Spirit.”
Before the teaching time, we gave each child a balloon. Deflated balloons have limited use and certainly fail in a balloon toss game.
But when we inflated the balloon, it became useful and bounced back and forth among the children in a balloon toss game.
This simple activity before the Bible story, engaged the children’s sense of touch and smell and was clearly engaging to some of the boys in our class who are on the lower end of the spectrum.
Experiential learning can be vital for children with disabilities in the classroom.
How Experiential Learning Can Promote a Positive Attitude Toward Learning
An example of experiential learning would be going to the zoo to learn about animals rather than just reading about them in a book or hearing about them.
Other things such as an art project, an interactive game, or role-playing can help a child with a disability to have a better attitude toward learning and thus be excited to learn about God and Jesus.
According to history, Confucius once said: “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do, and I understand.” That certainly can describe many of our special needs children in Sunday school!
Besides having a disability that impedes their learning, many of these children also have what is called an auditory processing disorder.
This can make it exceedingly difficult for a child to understand spoken language and can lead to frustration and upset.
Several years ago, I had a boy in my first-grade classroom who had a very severe auditory processing disorder.
Bob was a wonderful boy who loved to learn. However, he often had difficulty understanding what someone was saying to him.
One day I asked Bob to sit down so we could get started on our lesson. He just looked at me and stood by the door. I asked him a second time to please sit down but he just kept staring at me and I could tell that he was getting upset.
I finally grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and wrote SIT DOWN! Bob took one look at it and said, “Oh, sit down” and he sat down.
He had wanted to do what I asked of him, but he could not understand what that was. After that, we made sure that we always had a picture with a written sentence for our students to be able to understand what was being asked of them.
Experiential learning helps promote a positive attitude toward learning because it is fun and it helps the children be more engaged rather than just listening, which can be difficult for them.
You might have a student in the classroom that is unable to speak but that child can draw pictures or point to them to show that learning is taking place.
It has been found that learning by doing something rather than reading about it helps students learn at a higher level. It also has been found to help with social, emotional, and behavioral learning.
We want all our children to come to Jesus and learn from Him. In fact, Jesus Himself utilized this model of teaching and learning conducting several large-scale experiential activities including the feeding of the 5,000 (John 6:1-15) which precedes his teaching about being the bread of life (John 6:25-35).
The hearer was actively engaged in learning the spiritual lesson embedded within the story in that parable.
Using experiential learning, children become engaged in the lesson and are therefore better able to connect what they are learning to their real lives.
This weekend, consider using an experiential activity, teaching God’s Word to special needs children.