Transitioning Puggles to Cubbies

From time to time, we receive inquiries from Puggles leaders about transitioning Puggles to Cubbies program successfully. It is wonderful to hear from leaders with the foresight and desire to make the transition from Puggles to Cubbies as seamless as possible for the children.

The following suggestions may help the children feel more comfortable as they enter Cubbies at the beginning of the new club year. Feel free to pick and choose the ideas that you know would work best for your club, or let us know some other ways that you have helped children to transition smoothly from Puggles to Cubbies in the comments below!

Invite the Puggles to attend a Cubbies “open house.”

Tell your Puggles that the Cubbies group has invited them over to see what the Cubbies program is like. During this “open house” time you could:

• Allow the Puggles to participate in, or just observe, several segments of the Cubbies club night, such as Story Time, Game Time, Handbook Time.
• Assign a Cubbie “buddy” to each Puggle during their visit. The buddy would show the Puggle what to do throughout the evening.
• Allow parents to attend the open house so they can get familiar with Cubbies too! (Puggles leaders should also be present to help the children feel comfortable and to help supervise them.)
• Take a group picture as a souvenir that you could send home following their visit. If the parents could keep the photo displayed at home until it is time for the Puggle to move to Cubbies, the picture may help their child recall the experience.

Adjust the structure of your Puggles meeting.

During the last month of your Puggles year, you could change the structure of the Puggles meetings to resemble Cubbies by including a Cubbie Bear puppet show, teaching them the Cubbies theme song, and possibly even the Cubbies motto, key verse, and/or the A & C verses.

Practice Scripture memory during the summer break.

Since Scripture memorization is the most prominent adjustment, parents should be encouraged to help their child develop this skill before entering Cubbies. During the summer break, parents could help the child memorize the Cubbies motto, key verse, the A & C verses, and also review the precepts that they have learned at Puggles.

Get a head start.

Instead of (or in addition to) prepping them at the end of the year, you could have the children who graduated from Puggles start meeting in the fall a week before Cubbies starts and practice the above activities at that time. Young children may forget these things by the time an entire summer has passed.

We hope these ideas will be helpful! You know your Puggles the best, so feel free to use the ideas that would be most appropriate for your group, or come up with more ideas. We would love to hear how it works out, so please let us know in the comments section!