COVID-19 has put you and those you care about into a situation you've never experienced before. Isolating our families to stay safe can prompt kids to act out and tempers to flare. We are just not used to confined quarters for long periods. The CMYK Kids program at CMYK Church teaches social and emotional skills to help kids and parents get through emotional upset and conflict. Dr Jenny Barkac, our Kids Director has decades of experience with this and spends her workdays traveling across the US teaching these skills to parents and teachers. These skills will help you now and we want to share them with you.

Click the button below for our Emergency Toolkit for Families

For more tips and advice from our CMYK Kid’s Director, click on the ‘PARENTING IS HARD’ button below for our CMYK Kids Blog.

CMYK KID CARE

We have great kid care (birth-8th grade) taking place at CMYK. We split our kid care into 3 groups: Birth - Preschool, Kindergarten to Fifth Grade, and Sixth Grade to 8th Grade. This allows us to create the best space and experience possible for your children at each age. 

Our goal is for our our kids to be happy, healthy, whole human beings. This is what good spiritual health should do and it's what we try to do every Sunday. So we invite all kids to join the adults for the first segment of our gathering - to be part of the music, learning the songs and the prayers. Our hope is to spark conversation for families around the concepts of faith and spiritual practices.

Children over the age of two join the adults for a time of music and prayer before going to their classes. We love having kids with us as it helps us as a community to connect and engage all age groups in our work and practice. Our hope is to spark conversation for families around the concepts of faith and spiritual practices.

Many of us are parents of young kids and we know how hard this type of activity can be, so don’t worry if you’re a parent. We expect extra noise and commotion when we join together during this time. To help with that, kids under two years old can go directly to the kid space, if you wish.

You can check-in your kids for classes as soon as you arrive, or wait until the Connect Time after the music and prayer concludes. The Connect Time is also the time you’ll get your kids to their classes.

BIRTH - PRESCHOOL

For the youngest among us we’ve created a great nursery and playroom in the basement of Craft Local.

The time of our gathering is filled with lots of play, interaction, and fun.  All parents are welcome to check in their child before escorting their child to class and to check them out after the adults have wrapped up upstairs.

KINDERGARTEN - FIFTH GRADE

For our K-5 group, we have a separate area in the Craft Local basement that is set up especially for fun, crafts and conversation. 

We have extra space at Craft Local, so we will be adding more active games to our lesson plan.

At the end of the gathering, adults are welcome to head downstairs to pick up their kids.

MIDDLE SCHOOL

As the CMYK community grow and our kids grow older, we want to connect and engage with them in the best way possible. In our Middle School program, our goals are for the kids to connect with each other, have a great time and talk about things that matter. They join the adults for music and the Lord’s prayer, and then head to a local coffee shop for a drink and a talk. The kids return to Craft Local as our gathering finishes up.

CMYK KIDS VISION

Our goal is to help parents and kids find a more beautiful way forward together.

We teach kids skills to help them grow to be resilient, responsible and connected beings in a stressful and challenging world. Although we may or may not use Bible stories in a given lesson, we believe the skills we teach reflect the teachings of the life of Christ. These skills also complement the CMYK tenets of Be Present, Honest, Open and Love(d).

We teach parents skills to help them model and reinforce what we are teaching their children. Strengthening a parent's skill set in responding to the stresses of child-rearing helps them in helping their children.  In support of this, we feature a regular "Parenting Is Hard..." blog by our CMYK Kids Director, Dr Jenny Barkac. You’ll find the link below.

As an educational consultant with 25 years of classroom experience and expertise as a Behavior Interventionist, Jenny designs our lessons to work with the whole child while helping them to develop internal strategies for managing emotions in a safe way.  She bases our kids activities on Conscious Discipline concepts that are in place in schools across the USA. 

We encourage parents (and any adult, really) to work through the Managing Emotional Mayhem book, by Dr Becky Bailey. This book helps us improve our skills in responding to the upsets of life. Chlldren learn how to handle upsets by watching how their parents respond when things don’t go their way.

If you want to go deeper, we also recommend Dr Bailey’s book Easy To Love, Difficult To Discipline.   Click here for the Cliff Notes version of the book.  If interested, we can often get you a copy. Just ask.