Success at VBS!: Science Time

Vacation Bible School is DONE! (Can I get a whoop whoop? Or a FINALLY??!!?)

We had 48 kids in attendance, 21 of whom (!) were preschoolers. (I KNOW.) I already detailed most of the major structural changes we made to Group's "Everest" program, but we did make a few more changes as we went along to make the Science station the best it could be!

Let me start by saying, Science was, hands-down, THE favorite station of EVERYONE. What?! I know, I was surprised too. Here was our week, in science:


Day 1: God has the power to provide! We bought snow seeds from Group and used them as our project. Our Science Guy made one group fall out of their seats laughing when the snow seeds fell out all over his head.

Day 2: God has the power to comfort! Instead of the suggested Bubble Boosters, we made the incredibly-popular lava lamps! We find comfort in a lot of things, including night lights - and lava lamps are a sort of night-light that our campers' parents used to use! (Gosh, it hurt to say that one!) God can comfort us through lots of ways, including lava lamps! To make lava lamps, you need:

• A mini water bottle (we used 6-oz bottles from Kroger)
• Vegetable oil
• Water
• Food coloring (We used gel food coloring, because it was all we could find at the store, but it worked fine!)
• Alka seltzer tablets

Each camper drank a 6-oz water bottle on Monday, which we saved for Tuesday. First, we filled the bottle halfway with water. Then each camper chose one color and got a few drops of food coloring. We shook them up so the water was nice and colorful. Finally, we filled the rest of the bottle with vegetable oil. The layers of water and oil separated SUPER clearly. To set the lava lamp off, the kids dropped in 1/4 an alka seltzer tablet. They went CRAZY for these!

Day 3: God has the power to heal! I LOVED the bouncy ball idea, but HATED the price of Group's kits. Ouch!! We got bouncy ball kits much cheaper at Michael's.

Day 4: God has the power to forgive! Again, we weren't super thrilled with the Leapin' Lizards idea. Instead, our Science Guy came up with the idea of having the kids write a message in invisible ink! Just like God's forgiveness can make our sins disappear, we can make our messages disappear. We started by showing them a message he'd written in invisible ink:

Then they got to write their own! To make invisible ink, ALL YOU NEED is

• Lemon juice (We used both lemon juice from a bottle and freshly squeezed lemons; they worked the same)
• Q tips
• Paper
• A heat source (A toaster worked best for us!)

We dipped the Q tips in the lemon juice and wrote just like we would with a pencil! The kids wrote two messages, one to reveal in class and one to reveal at home. After the juice was dry, it disappeared! In order to make it reappear, we held it over a toaster and let the heat work its magic. Soon, the message came back!

The only problem was time; the kids who used too much juice had to wait a loooong time for theirs to dry, and often they weren't quite dry by the time the 20-minute station was over! Those kids just got to take two pieces home, so they were fine with it. :-) However, we did start to fix that problem later in the day by encouraging them to dip their Q-tips in just a liiiitle bit of juice.


Day 5: God has the power to love us forever! Okay, I messed up the last day. :'( I ordered a whole set of the Befuddlers, but they really weren't appropriate for the preschoolers. So, we were scrambling to put together an all-ages project. Again, it was the Science Guy to the rescue! We made coffee filter butterflies, to show that God loves us SO much, we need to spread His love everywhere!
To make coffee filter butterflies, you need:

• Coffee filters
• Black marker
• Cups of water
• Pipe cleaners

Each student drew a black circle on their coffee filter, then put it in the cup of water to watch the marker spread through the coffee filter and turn different colors - just like God's love spreads through the world and transforms it! We turned them into butterflies by pinching the center together and twisting pipe cleaners around it.
 (I was busy taking individual pictures on Friday, and didn't actually get any shots of our butterflies - but they looked similar to this!)

Hope your week at VBS goes smoothly!

Adapting Everest

As VBS season begins, and all the craziness it entails ensues, I want to point out a couple of the major changes we made to the routine this year. These were big shifts for our church, but were on the whole, very well received!


Last year (and really, all the years prior), we kept preschoolers separate from the stations, just like the curriculum suggests. They had their own little set of rooms and kept to their own curriculum, and the leaders unanimously said they were BORED out of their minds and the kids were going STIR-CRAZY cooped up in their own rooms! This year we decided to try having preschoolers rotate through the stations as their own group, keeping all preschoolers together so that the station leaders could adjust the curriculum as needed.


Of course, it didn't go COMPLETELY smoothly.... For one thing, out of our 48 registered kids, 21 of them were preschoolers! Does anyone else experience that with their VBS signups?! It seems that without fail, three-quarters of our campers are under the age of 7, with preschoolers being by far the most represented. To not totally overwhelm the poor station leaders, we split them up into two groups with 10 and 11 campers each. They were still by far our biggest groups, but I made sure that our two strongest leaders were with them, and they had a lot of junior guide help :-)

It seemed unanimous that the preschoolers liked things this way a TON better. There were a couple of the science experiments (Day 5's Befuddler being the most obvious one) that were a bit over their heads, but by having them in their own group, we were able to switch things up for them. I think this might be our new way to handle preschoolers! One thing we might change, though, is the video - They had a VERY hard time sitting through that station (and Bible story, but that's a pretty necessary station). One of the leaders suggested that in place of Video, the preschoolers get a "recess" time - blocks, games, toys, coloring, anything that isn't just sitting quietly to watch a video. It got to be a bit of a long day for them and they might need a bit of a break.


We also switched things up this year with Snack. The only room in our church big enough to hold all the kids eating snack at once is the gym, which is also where our Opening and Closing happens. Last year, we had round tables set up around the gym and followed the guidelines to have one group prepare snack (and miss games...ouch!) for the rest of the group, who all came in at once to eat. Well, of course, this being in the gym, it got CRAZY. Running around, jumping onto the sets, tripping over mic cords, screaming, AHHH! I was ready to pull my hair out during snack time EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.


Well, this year I wanted to leave VBS with all my hair intact. So after speaking with our snack leader (who is absolutely AWESOME- and has 4 kids, all with food allergies, so she was suuper cognizant of all our other allergy kids), we decided to make snack its own station just like all the others. Kids rotated through for 20 minutes, made their own snack, and ate it with their group. It worked out great - it was MUCH calmer and our snack leader even thought it made it easier to deal with kids who have allergies, because the groups were smaller! 


The only negative feedback I got about having snack as its own station was that the groups didn't see each other very much throughout the day, other than in the hallways during passing time. While I know that as a kid, you want to see your brother/sister/friend in another group, as the director... It was much easier to manage!! We still had a little bit of running around, because we had them make their snack in the kitchen and then carried it into the gym to eat (and, let's face it, being in the gym is equivalent to saying, "Hey! Run around!"). I think next year we'll switch it up to have them make their snack in the kitchen and then carry it to a classroom across the hall. MUCH more contained!


If you're curious, here's the schedule I came up with that worked the best for our church. You'll notice a couple other differences from Group's suggestions - We got rid of the 5 minute travel time, because let's face it, our church building is wayyy too small for that to be necessary; they got to their destinations in like, 30 seconds. We also made Music its own station, led by our Opening & Closing leader, so the kids could learn more songs, and we extended the Opening and Closing by 15 minutes to fit everything in (we found that 15 minutes was not NEARLY enough time).


Good luck with your own VBS! Hope this helps!