Grow Curriculum & Strategy Reviews 262

It just completely took our Kids Ministry to a new level! We are working through Scripture with them, the visuals are amazing, and every game ties in with the Big Idea for the day. Re-iteration is KEY, and it WORKS!

Overall its been working great! We love that we can customize it to our audience and team!

Thank you!

Unfortunately, it seems that it is tough to get most things downloaded in order to be able to access them. In order for it to be the best with accessibility, things should be accessible in the website, and only needed downloaded for changes. We shouldn't have to download videos and songs. Those files are too big, and there should just be a link where they can open in a browser. We are still learning, but are really struggling with accessibility.

Teaching videos need work on volume. Opening & closing are too loud. The guy is louder than Caxsie...she's hard to hear & when you turn it up, everything else is way too loud. We are in COVID mode in person which makes it difficult for the video, we're close to the sanctuary & have had noise complaints so we not doing teaching videos at this time. So far it's my only complaint with the cutticulum.

We LOVE Grow curriculum and strategy! I do not have enough positive things to say about it. It makes me look like I have it ALL together - even when I don't! And the Scope and Sequence is wonderful for our students' learning. Thanks Grow!

Love the Series and all the game help! Next year we will purchase the event package along with the curriculum!

I've loved using grow from it's beginning. Now 4 years in it's only gotten better! I'm thankful for the diverse make up on the curriculum writing team, and all the 'extra' resources. The images and 1-minute sermons are my current favorite things - they are helping me save so much time on office work so that I can spend more time connecting with my students! Thanks Kenny & Elle for putting together an awesome team that delivers such a great resource for youth workers! Love y'all!

I love how I can edit the sermons and make them my own. The artwork is great too. I love the additional resources for volunteers and parents. This has allowed me to counsel more and spend more time with teens and their families.

So far, it's been an incredible resource. I literally began the Blast Off series two Sundays ago, but it's been great!

The lessons are nice, but the real treat is all the advice they give for how to plan, how to engage parents, students and volunteers; creating a culture and ecosystem that encourages the whole church to engage it's teens.

I really enjoy using this curriculum! It is God- centered and truly simple and easy to use.

I’m very pleased with the grow curriculum and strategy. I started implementing the strategy last year and decided to get the curriculum this year. I’m new to purchasing curriculum as I’ve only purchased one series and some screen games from DYM. This option is substantially more than a membership there but provides way more. This really is the whole enchilada when it comes to strategy and programming.

The trigger for me purchasing the curriculum was wanting the margin to produce engaging content online. Honestly, I was embarrassed and hesitant to purchase curriculum. A few months in and I don’t regret it. I am full time in a mountain (rural) community in Southern California at a more traditional church. I simply cannot produce content online if I’m having to do all the things offered with grow and we don’t have people at our church who could help with content creation. Having extra margin has been great!

Highlights:
-the calendar cards are a huge wow factor for anyone who walks in to my office and sees it. They’re great.
-parent and volunteer handbooks are great
-very adaptable strategy.
-very creative message ideas that are easily adaptable.
-the attendance tracker (not included with grow) is a great tool as well. There are some great features on there.

One suggestion (I’m only 90 days in):
Have a student leadership option. I’m sure the grow team has thought about this... But it would be nice to see how student leaders could fit into the overall grow strategy.

We are loving Grow! The whole process from working with our budget, to downloading files has been super easy and helpful. It took me awhile to find a few things in the files but after only 2 months of it, I know where to look.
The kids are loving the lessons and seem to retain the ideas better. There's so much versatility and adaptability in the curriculum, we are using it for Sunday School, Children's church, and Wednesday nights. Thank you for rejuvenating our children's ministry!

Solid theology! Such an awesome curriculum!

I absolutely love the Grow Curriculum and it's resources! I've only been using it for a few weeks, but our students enjoy it and it is much easier for our teachers to teach from. I absolutely love how engaging it is and yet how Bible based it is.

The only negatives that I have relate to teaching visuals and to the preschool lesson plans. Grow provides videos for our teachers to use as visuals, but especially with both my preschool age and toddler class (2's and 3's), our children love to see visuals as the story is taught. If Grow would include even one picture per lesson for the teacher to display while teaching the Bible lesson, this would be truly helpful! I do not think this is a must in the elementary classroom, but within my 4's and 5's class and my 2's and 3's class, it would be very beneficial!
In regards to the preschool lesson plans, these work amazingly well in my 4's and 5's class, but the teachers in 2's and 3's need a bit more breakdown for our younger students. If Grow provided lesson plans that were even more simplified for this age group (2's and 3's), it would be extremely helpful to both teachers and students! Attendance charts would also be a nice bonus for this age range.
I am very impressed with this curriculum and all of the resources provided! With a few tweaks it would earn a 5 out of 5 from me!

Grow is great! We just switched to it and it has been awesome so far. If I could recommend anything would be to add more shareable content for social media

Love so much about this curriculum. It's easy to use, I love how everything is so accessible online and I love how collaborative it is with different writers and creators. My only wish is that it would point to Christ more in the lessons. We are adding in a lot of content in the teaching times, because for our church it is a high value to show kids how ALL stories in the Bible point to the coming Savior. For example, in Promise, week 1, the big point was "God Promised to fix what was broken," and the whole time I was preparing for the lesson I wanted it to talk more about the problem of sin that was introduced in the garden, but go into more depth on HOW God planned to fix the problem of sin (not just that the world or creation was broken and God promised to fix it, but OUR sin problem and what God later did to fix our sin problem). We added it in for our lessons, and I know there is not a "one size fits all" curriculum as many who use these lessons are from all different perspectives, but it would just make it SO much better for us if that teaching was included more. :) But we're new to Grow, and perhaps this will change as we get further into it! Also, we're coming from Gospel Project, which is BIG on having all lessons point to Jesus. :) Other than that, we have really enjoyed Grow! Excited to learn more about it and continue using it!

I REALLY like this curriculum. I think it engages the children and volunteers wonderfully! Where I am having a bit of trouble, is helping our volunteers tie the games back into the story, and giving those who haven't taught Sunday School before that little extra emphasis on the story and how to explain it to the children.

I also wish they had a version for those who Just have a Sunday School hour and do not have a children's worship. I'm able to use some of it for other things, but right now we aren't having a mid-week program, so some of the Sunday curricula doesn't get used.

Overall though, I really enjoy using this curriculum! I would definitely recommend this to anyone.

I have been trying to cancel our services since August and am unable to do so

You all are amazing (obviously hard working) folks!

I'd say 90% of the curriculum is GREAT! All of the programming, events, media, and heart for discipleship (huge reason I bought this).

If could offer any constructive criticism it would be on the Bible portions. I have found so far, that there seems to be an idea of what to talk about and then an attempt to "put scripture in". It shows up in various ways.
1. There is often a TON of verses to cover in one teaching. Which I have found can be more confusing than helpful because there so much that we do not address in those verses.
2. The passages chosen offer a bigger theology than what is being pointed to. Often I have had to work hard getting past, "Self help" points or some sort of moralism to preach the good news of Jesus.

I understand having multiple teachers gives you all a ton of work and grooming to be done. But I wonder if there could be attempts to be more "gospel centric". Typically I seek to find a "how does Jesus do this on our behalf perfectly" to see a living savior everywhere in the Bible.

I am blessed to have something to work off of with Grow Curriculum, I would just like to see some stronger theology and more gospel centric.