eZine 02.16.2010

Weekly Resources, Ideas and Articles from The Source for Youth Ministry
Tuesday, February 16, 2010

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Team Builders are a great way to have fun, develop unity, and practice serving and leading together. This team builder can be used with just one group of students, or with several groups of students “competing” against one another. The best part is, all you need is one 8′ long 2X4 for each team. Here’s what you do:

Tell the students to get into groups/teams of 5 students each. Next, give each team a 2X4 and tell them to lay it on the ground and step onto it. After everyone is “on board” (get it?), explain that they are to arrange themselves in order of their birthdays, earliest to latest. The first team to properly align themselves, wins. BUT! There are two conditions under which they must work:

This week’s Youth Culture Window article is part three of our promised four part series on the Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest report on kids and media consumption. It focuses on the “print media” that students consume for entertainment purposes.

Reading. That time-consuming activity where one has to open a book, manually flip through page after page, and focus on…words?

Maybe that’s why so few kids are doing any of it these days.

Reduction in Reading
In Kaiser Family Foundation’s recently released 2009 report, Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8-18-Year Olds, researchers continued their decade-long study on the “entertainment media” that kids consume on a daily basis. In part three of our promised series on their report, we’re taking a look at the “print media” (books, newspapers, magazines, etc.) that kids read these days. Bear in mind, the measurements only include the reading that kids did as entertainment; school-related reading is not a part of these findings.

In their 2009 report, KFF found that consumption of every single form of entertainment media (TV, music, video games, etc.) increased… except reading. But that’s not really surprising, is it? They also found that reading for entertainment is the only media activity that decreases as the child grows older. Again, not surprising.

During the last 5 years, the total amount of time 8- to 18-year-olds spent reading books, magazines, and newspapers “for pleasure” dropped by 5 minutes per day…to 38 minutes each day. (In their 1999 and 2004 reports, that number was 43 minutes per day.) Other interesting findings include:

• About 10% of kids read newspapers and magazines online for about 21 minutes per day.
• On average, girls read about 10 minutes more per day than boys do.
• Heavy readers – kids who read an hour or more each day – were “substantially more likely to say they earn high grades” than light readers.

Shrinking Selection
A closer look at kids’ reading habits reveals that not all print media is created equal in their eyes. According to KFF, time spent reading “books” each day grew by several minutes. However, kids are reading far less “magazines” and “newspapers” these days. For instance, in 1999, 42% of the target group flipped through newspapers, but in 2009, only 23% did the same. In 1999, more than half of 8- to 18-year-olds (55%) read magazines, but in 2009, a mere 35% read them.

But then again, it’s hard for kids to read newspapers and magazines when they keep going out of business.

We’ve watched with keen interest as several newspapers and kid-centric magazines printed their last page in the past year and a half. Time has listed the Top 10 Most Endangered Newspapers in the country, and some of the more popular magazines….

For those of you who have teenagers that follow our online Bible studies at www.ALilBit.com, we want to let you know that we are still motoring through Mark. Your teenagers can access these 10 minute long Bible studies for free at our website (www.ALilBit.com). Just invite your students to download as many of our Bible studies as they want from iTunes (accessible from our website). Here’s a glimpse of where we are right now:

EPISODE #72
Matt Furby: Mark 11:20-26
Published: 2/13/2010

In this podcast Furby teaches us a lesson on faith by following up with what happened to the fig tree Jesus cursed in the last episode. You don’t want to miss this hope-filled podcast that instructs us on how to pray with faith. Check it out!

FIND EVEN MORE RESOURCES YOU CAN USE ON THESOURCE4YM.COM, INCLUDING OUR OUTREACH RESOURCE OF THE WEEK AND OUR SPIRITUAL GROWTH RESOURCE OF THE WEEK, RIGHT THERE ON THE FRONT PAGE OF OUR WEBSITE!