Book Review: Church Nanny SOS

Gigi Schweikert. Church Nanny SOS: Teaching Discipline Essentials for Preschool Ministry Volunteers. Birmingham, Alabama: New Hope Publishers, 2007, 198 pp.

Church Nanny SOS is a book aimed at helping preschool ministry volunteers navigate the many hurdles of ministering to young children. Volunteers often have lots of questions about how to handle the different aspects of the ministry. Gigi Schweikert takes up the task of answering many of those questions. This book begins by explaining how to prevent many of the problems that seem to plague preschool ministries. It does not, however, neglect how to handle problems when they do arise. In fact, the last chapter in the book contains a quick-reference guide to help understand and properly address some of the common behavioral problems of preschoolers.

This book obviously does not cover all of the problems of preschool ministry nor does it cover them in an in-depth manner. The best way to characterize this book is to liken it to a primer or somewhat of a handbook. It gives a great introduction and overview on preventing and handling the common problems of ministering to preschoolers. It is organized into chapters that cover the “essentials” of ministering to preschoolers. What I found, however, was that many things were repeated throughout the book. Perhaps this is because those are things that are important. Perhaps it is because some of those things are part of several of the essentials, consistency for example. This book consistently mentions consistency in several of the essentials. There must be consistency in the routine, there must be consistency in enforcing the rules, there must be consistency in pick-up and drop-off, etc. The other thing I found particularly distracting were the many lists. These lists often broke the flow of the text and interrupted the thought stream. I believe many of these lists could have been placed at the end of the chapters and referred to in the text of the chapter. This would have been far less distracting. On the other hand, the content was solid and the advice was helpful. I would certainly recommend this book to anyone struggling with how to address problems in their preschool ministry.

You can purchase this book at Amazon.com, the WMU by clicking on the above photo of the cover, or by clicking HERE.

0 Response to "Book Review: Church Nanny SOS"