If you think children’s ministry at your church doesn’t serve any kids with disabilities, you’d be surprised. According to the CDC, 1 in 6 kids have a disability, so it’s likely kids with disabilities are coming to your church.

And yet, many churches don’t have a disability ministry. That means there is an incredible opportunity to reach a very unreached people group!

The website church4everychild.org compiled research about children with disabilities and their families. According to their research, about 90% of church-going parents of kids with disabilities said a welcoming attitude was the most helpful support they received. In other words, you don’t need a big budget or a full-time staff member to make your ministry inclusive! Read on to discover how to teach in ways that help all families feel welcome at your church.

With some adaptations, Group curriculum works well to teach kids of all abilities! Sometimes a small modification or highlighting a specific activity is all it takes to make sure everyone is involved and impacted by a lesson. In other words, a little tweak goes a long way!

Charla Holst, Occupational Therapist and Founder of Overcomer Ministries, has shared some great ways to adapt curriculum and use it well. Try her 5 simple ideas to help your teaching be more inclusive for all abilities.

1. Prayerfully Understand Your Goals for Inclusivity in Children’s Ministry

Take time to pray and ask God about your goals for teaching. Maybe you already know your goal, but ask God to show you if your teaching styles are driven by that goal. Often, we may say the goal is to help kids know and love Jesus (or something similar), but we act like the goal is to have kids who can sit still and listen well. Or maybe the goal is to have kids who can recite Bible verses and facts perfectly.

Charla notes that if your goal is truly faith transformation, you can reach everyone! Sometimes we unintentionally make our goals feel more about good behavior. But when your focus is on an inclusive and meaningful goal everyone can achieve, you’ll find that behaviors often follow. Set goals like “hide God’s Word in our hearts” instead of “read and memorize Bible verses” to include everyone. This gets more at the heart behind your ministry and takes out abilities not everyone may have.

2. Understand Kids’ Strengths and Weaknesses

Group Curriculum uses a variety of ways to learn, such as physical activity, logical and spatial reasoning, writing, drawing and crafts, and music. Depending on the needs of your group, some of those activities may work better than others!

For example, Charla found that many of her kids like to doodle and draw. Her class included a range of abilities, including gifted, kids with autism spectrum disorders, Down syndrome, ADHD, and dyslexia. But she was able to find an experience that included everyone; she simply covered a table with white paper and set out markers to share. As kids learned the Bible story, they were able to illustrate it, then review what they learned by describing their illustrations.

Charla noted, “One of our students with Down syndrome even found a great illustration of the story on his phone to share with the class along with his drawings.  This simple activity allowed all the students, those with disabilities and without, to be engaged in hearing the Word of God and better comprehending it.”

Be Aware of Hidden Disabilities

As you evaluate kids’ strengths and weaknesses, Charla reminds you to be aware of hidden or invisible disabilities, such as dyslexia, autism, and ADHD. You might even ask caregivers to fill out a questionnaire asking for input on kids’ strengths, weaknesses, gifts, and talents.

Understanding these gifts can help you spend more time on activities that work well with your kids’ needs, and to highlight kids who excel at a specific task or skill.

Letting kids have choice also helps everyone contribute and belong. For example, a Group curriculum lesson may form groups and let kids within a group choose who will be the scribe, the actor, the illustrator, and so on. Or you might invite kids to express their thoughts by writing or drawing. (All Together Sunday School lessons include choosing roles each week!)

When kids can choose their roles, they all shine! This helps kids of all abilities feel valued because we all have different ways of thinking and different areas in which we excel. But it especially helps kids with disabilities feel like they can showcase what they’re best at, rather than being highlighted for what they struggle with.

3. Use Movement to Promote Inclusivity in Children’s Ministry

In Group’s Sunday School curriculum, it’s pretty rare to have kids just sitting still and listening! Movement is key for learning in kids of all abilities! For example, kids might journey into a fish-tent to learn about Jonah, march around the walls of Jericho, or throw balls at a target as they experience the story of David and Goliath.

Charla notes, “Kids are made to move, and they will learn best if their brain and body is ready to learn. Movement is regulating to the body and brain, and a person cannot learn well when dysregulated. Research shows movement with learning is a very effective way for people of all abilities to learn.”

4. Provide Multiple Ways to Learn and Express Learning

Some Group curriculum, such as Simply Loved and Hands-On Bible Curriculum, involves station options. This could be a sensory bin, a craft, a picture book, or so on. Charla notes that The Action Bible, being fully graphic, is a great resource for kids to browse through on their own.

Rather than just choosing one station, set them all up! This gives kids a choice to learn and express learning in a way that best fits them! Disabilities aside, there’s no one “right” way to learn. Kids express learning in different ways, so this benefits all your kids!

Likewise, take advantage of the way the Bible story is taught differently. In some lessons, the Bible experience may be musically bent, another it might involve drawing, and in another it could be very active! Letting kids choose from among these types of options helps kids of all abilities feel like they can participate and contribute. This will ensure you’re meeting a variety of ways kids learn and excel.

This also means being sensitive to kids’ needs. If you’re looking for a volunteer to pray, don’t assign a child who didn’t volunteer; they may have difficulty speaking or praying aloud. Don’t assign new children to read the Bible, because they may have dyslexia. Kids may have disabilities you’re unaware of, so give kids alternatives if they feel uncomfortable participating in a specific activity.

Also, leverage technology to add accessibility features! Using voice to text to write or offering tablets with digital versions of handouts can help kids participate in lessons. Most digital devices have accessibility features built in, such as font changes or brightness settings.

5. Use Multisensory Learning to Offer Inclusivity in Children’s Ministry

Charla says, “As an occupational therapist, I love the Hands-On Bible Curriculum by Group Publishing because it provides really fun, creative, easy multisensory learning activities for every lesson.”

Group’s philosophy is that when kids have things to touch, hear, smell, taste, and see, that will help them learn! So use all the senses to engage the whole brain for better learning for people of all abilities. We all learn more easily, retain knowledge longer, and can retrieve it better when we learn using all our senses. Multisensory learning also helps the brain self-correct if someone has a learning disability.

Charla notes that MRIs reveal how multisensory learning lights up different places in the brain and makes stronger connections in the brain for improved long-term memory. The research is there—how you teach matters!

Keeping basic supplies stocked—enough for each child to use—makes it easy to give kids multisensory experiences.

For more on multi-sensory ideas, check out this free resource: Over 75 Multisensory Ideas For Teaching The Bible.

Beginning your journey to be more inclusive doesn’t require a big budget or massive overhauls. It begins with a heart for wanting everyone to feel welcome, and a prayerful eye for seeing where there may be barriers for people who want to join your ministry. By making small tweaks, you can begin to communicate a message of acceptance and make people of all abilities feel more welcome in your children’s ministry.

More About Charla Holst

Charla Holst, OTR/L, serves as founder and President of Overcomer Ministries, Inc. where she provides Christ-Centered Occupational Therapy Consultation, training, sensory regulation tools and resources to churches and ministries to overcome obstacles to Jesus.  Her vision is for people of all abilities to have access to learn about Jesus, worship with fellow believers, grow in discipleship and serve in ministry.  Charla and her husband Dave have two adult children, and they have worked together in ministry for over three decades of marriage. They have taught the fourth and fifth graders at their church for 12 years. 

Charla also serves as the Disability Ministry Leader at her local church. During her 32-year career as an Occupational Therapist, she has authored three books: Empowering Occupational Therapy, All That I Want To Be, and Control Is My Goal. She is currently collaborating to write Act on His Word, an inclusive Bible curriculum utilizing the Universal Design for Learning framework. You can find all of her free disability ministry resources here.