Good ways to get 2 year olds to listen to you?

Question

I teach Sunday School to 2 and 3 year olds. I've noticed that the three year olds will listen and remain seated when told and will help clean up and respond well to compliments ("Will, thank you so much for helping me clean up these toys, you're such a good helper!"

The younger ones, on the other hand, rarely sit still and never help clean up.

Any good ideas?

Answer 1

Why are you  expecting so much from the little ones.

What qualifications do you have as a teacher!?

the 2 year olds will sit longer and help when they are 3!

Answer 2

Make everything a challenge and they might get excited to do something. Like clean up time, show the kids how fast you can put toys in the bucket... ask can you pick up the toys too? Lets have a race...ready, GO! Many times, they will go for this type of thing. Others not so much. Its really a hit and miss sort of thing. Children at such a young age learn by example, and at this age their attention span is only one minute per year of age. That is why circle is a difficult concept at this age. Oh and one thing I found always gets their attention is BUBBLES. Break out the bubbles to get them to circle time, and then when they start to loose interest, break'em out again, then after a few, do some more stuff. Eventually you have to be done and just do fun stuff like coloring at the table or duck, duck goose. They won't sing forever, not even for all the bubbles in the world.

Answer 3

You have to incorporate activities with the lesson.  Two-year olds can't be still and listen for long.  

If you take some cotton balls and tell them the story of the good shepherd while pretending that the cotton balls are sheep you will get their attention.  

Tell them what shepherds do and why shepherds will leave the flock to seek a lost one out.

etc etc.  Let them find lost sheep.  Let them gather the sheep and put them into the fold.   etc etc.

Always incorporate an activity with a lesson because they can put the two together and get the idea of the lesson.  

God Bless!

Answer 4

2 year old toddlers are naturally more active and their cognitive faculties are less mature. Forcing such young children to sit still like that for long periods is unhealthy and cruel. But I guess being the Christian type you probably think that they're "sinful" and just need to have the devil trained out of them, or some such nonsense.

Answer 5

What a difference a year makes! Two year olds, for the most part, don't have the attention span capabilities developed as much as those of a three year old. Cater to this deficiency. If you involve them in short, easy to understand activities (not more than maybe 5-10 mins each), you will notice a difference.

Answer 6

They will not sit still

They are constantly learning and absorbing everything....

Try group activities....that might help....

Elmo has this handled with my granddaughter....she loves him

Answer 7

You may try separating the age groups.  The 2 yr olds might craft out of blocks a portion of the lesson and allow them to share with the group what they made.  

Or, break your lesson into small sections and have both groups create story related (short) projects in between...with enough time to share.  Children at that age love to work with their hands and share what they have done. Hope this helps.