You didn’t tell how old the small kids are. This probably matters. 7 year olds are different from 11 year olds are different from 15 year olds. Whatever you pick as the topic, you should probably come up with a treatment that simpler than what you’d think necessary. And then make it even more simple.
This is something I’ve struggled with (am still struggling with, really) in my time teaching kids as a volunteer. I already knew the basics of child psychology, remembered more or less what concepts I could expect kids to handle at various stages of development and tried to develop lessons which accounted for their abilities.… but in the beginning, I still way overshot for the younger kids, because I failed to keep in mind that honestly, normal little kids are really dumb. If you treat them like teenagers minus some major reasoning faculties, you’re still going to seriously overestimate the caliber of thinking they’re likely to be capable of.
This is something I’ve struggled with (am still struggling with, really) in my time teaching kids as a volunteer. I already knew the basics of child psychology, remembered more or less what concepts I could expect kids to handle at various stages of development and tried to develop lessons which accounted for their abilities.… but in the beginning, I still way overshot for the younger kids, because I failed to keep in mind that honestly, normal little kids are really dumb. If you treat them like teenagers minus some major reasoning faculties, you’re still going to seriously overestimate the caliber of thinking they’re likely to be capable of.
Which is why, even allowing for suspense of disbelief, Ender’s Game is so ridiculous.