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!

Getting Ready for Vacation Bible School: Everest!

Out of everything my job entails, Vacation Bible School is THE week of the year that takes time, preparation, planning planning planning....and - horror of horrors! - DECORATIONS. Decorating is probably the thing I am absolutely the worst at. This year, I chose Group's "Everest" VBS program, which on the whole was super great - but it required lots of setup and decorations. Thankfully, I had the Decorations CD, clipart, and LOTS of help!


I actually started setup about a month ago when I raided my mom's basement (yes, I still do that... way more than I care to admit) for camping supplies to set up a Base Camp in the Narthex. This became our main advertisement on Sunday mornings. You'll see we had a hammock, a tent and sleeping bag (which was a HUGE hit with the little kids - I was routinely finding several kids curled up in there between services!), two backpacking backpacks, a camp kitchen setup with pots, pans, and a traveling stove, and other random camping accessories. I printed out some of the camping paraphernalia clipart that wasn't very accessible to us physically from the Everest CD and hung them up - an oxygen tank, boots, rope, and a pickax. Next to the "Base Camp" I hung a banner (which I FINALLY figured out how to make.... but still can't figure out how to print... Oops!) under which we stood during services to pass out flyers and registration forms.

All that setup actually became SUPER handy when it came time to set up for week! We held our Opening and Closing in the family center, so most of my decorating attempts were focused in there. We started by just moving the entire Base Camp set to the front of the gym, and it looked really great! It was missing some mountains, though, so this is where I got my helpers involved.

I read the decoration guide from Group and I even went so far as to watch the Decoration video, but when I went to Joann's and was asked to shell out $40 for each sheet of foam (and you need, like, 6!), I balked. I could not imagine spending over a hundred bucks on decorations! What!! So instead, I went the cheap (but admittedly, not as pretty) route and rolled out the paper. We drew a mountain on two big pieces of white paper and stuck it up on the wall. Then, my middle school helpers worked VERY diligently to build what they called a "glacier" out of posterboard and foam, and it even stood up by itself! Maybe it didn't look a TON like a glacier, but it was something white anyway :-)

That made up the entirety of our Base Camp decorations! I had two other decorating forays:


To signify which rooms were part of VBS, I taped poster border up on the doorways, facing backward so the white part was showing. It ended up looking a lot like snow or icicles hanging down!

By the registration desk, we worked VERY hard to make an "Ice Tunnel." I had seen tons of super cool-looking examples online, but couldn't for the life of me figure out how to make one! So, I ended up taking the easy way out and covering a toddler play tunnel with white plastic tablecloths. Maybe it didn't look AWESOME, but the kids sure liked it :-)

That's it! That's the extent of our decorations, for the most part. Fingers crossed for a good and accident-free week!

Easter Egg Shenanigans!

As part of our family fellowship initiative this year, I wanted to do something REALLY FABULOUS for Easter this year. We had done tiny little through-the-church Easter egg hunts before, but I wanted something GREAT to really bring in the community and involve families in the awesomeness that is Easter!

SO, in striving toward that goal, we had a community-wide Easter egg hunt on the Saturday morning before Easter! It was (really really) cold, but we had it outside anyway- the eggs were not too hard to find! I set out every obstacle I could find from our craft closet to make some of them trickier, but honestly, I think egg hunts are harder for the hiders than they are for the hunters! We tried our best:

Even so, most of the older kids had a very easy time finding their eggs. In retrospect, we didn't even need this cute little preschool area, because even the "harder" ones were way too easy! How do you make it harder to find brightly colored plastic eggs in an open field?! But seriously, I want suggestions!

In an effort to make it a bit more fair, each child was allowed 1 egg of each color, but there were also larger multicolored eggs ($1.50 for 8 at Meijer!) that served as "bonus" eggs. They were allowed to keep any of the bonus eggs they found! We tried to hide those a little better, but again... Way too easy :/

Anyways, after finding our eggs (in retrospect, it was a good thing that it didn't take too long to find them, because it was SO CRAZY COLD!), we shepherded everyone into the family center for more activities!

Each person got a coloring book, which you can upload here (or make your own- it was super easy!). Each page asked them to open one color of egg. I got this amazing idea from Ministry-to-Children, who has their own free coloring book too! I had actually used those prizes and books last year, so I wanted something fresh for this year. :) The materials I used to fill the eggs were:
Green: Palms
Blue: Silver chocolate coins (the cheapest I found were on Amazon)
Orange: Candy cross bracelets from Oriental Trading
Pink: Nothing!
White: Cross eraser from Oriental Trading (I know Ministry-to-Children uses these, too, but they are just SO AWESOME I couldn't resist)
Purple: Bubbles
Yellow: "He Lives" stamp from Oriental Trading



The bonus eggs were filled with candy - definitely a hit with the kids!

We also had other activities for the early finishers! We had egg dyeing:

I made the dye myself out of vinegar and food coloring using this recipe. SUPER easy and WAY cheaper!! I also hard-boiled all the eggs the night before by baking them in a muffin pan. What?! I had no idea you could do that until I found this on Pinterest. Seriously though, it was SO much easier and faster and I only cracked one egg!

We had "pin the tail on the Easter bunny," for which we used this giant bunny that my sister drew by hand! Isn't she the best?!

Outside, another helper was running relay races - the bunny hop (using a big garbage bag to make sure we didn't walk, since I couldn't find potato sacks anywhere), and an egg race (they had to race while balancing a hard-boiled egg on a spoon).

It was definitely a hit! I liked having it on a Saturday morning because it pulled in more of the community members who might not want to brave church on Easter Sunday. Even though next year I hope it will be a bit warmer, this was definitely a successful fellowship event!

Creation in 5th and 6th Grade

The first lesson we tackled with our 5th and 6th graders was, naturally, the first Bible story: Creation!

Since most of the kids have heard the Creation story ad nauseum, we had to mix things up a little bit to get them interested. We started with a "wiggles-out" game - Flicking a paper football through a "goal." They struggled a little bit with this, to be honest- which totally surprised me. I thought preteens LOVED that game. Turns out, they could use a lot more practice!

Then we started our discussions. We thought about what "creation" meant, making a huge banner with the word CREATION. We read three Bible passages about creation, and after each one every kid drew another picture of one thing that God created. After the (giant!) banner was filled with drawings, we looked back at it and asked if God thought alllllllll of those things were good. The answer was a resounding, YES- although we did have some discussion surrounding whether certain things really were "good." After lots of thinking, we decided to table the issue until next week (Adam and Eve).

Finally, we got to the good part: Making our own creations! We has some super creative groups. They were given a random assortment of materials to help... 

Froot loops, paper plates, toothpicks, duplos, and more.

And check out what they came up with!

Then we discussed what was good about our creations. We all decided they were very good!

Happy creating!

Gingerbread Nativities

 Our December family fellowship night was a huge success! We had 20 families come and make gingerbread nativity scenes.  Now, you may be wondering... What? A gingerbread nativity scene? Don't you mean a gingerbread HOUSE?

Well, I got the super awesome idea from Messy Church. We bought graham crackers (apparently a stronger, more usable option than actual gingerbread....and, let's be real, less baking involved), gumdrops, pretzels, licorice, Oreos, animal crackers, and marshmallows, and I made some huuuge batches of royal icing - actually way easier than I thought it would be!

Here are some of the materials we set out...

And here are some of the finished products! Pretty great, huh?

The girls working on this one thought it was hilarious to have sheep "poop"!

The 5-year-old who did this one said "All the animals are sleeping because they're waiting for Jesus to be born." Whaat? Way too cute.

Pretty great! The kids had an awesome time and the families got so creative.

Merry Christmas!

Giving LOTS of Thanks!

Our 5th and 6th grade group met for their last class of 2014 yesterday, and with it being only 4 days until Thanksgiving, I figured it would be a good idea to do some giving of thanks!

Our messy game of the day was a partner challenge: One partner laid on their backs while another dipped mini marshmallows in chocolate sauce and tried to toss them into their partner's mouths. Yum!

We started with a trip through the Bible to find examples of people giving and showing thanks. Since this year we're digging through the New Testament, I picked Anna, the leper, and Jesus as our focus characters (Luke 2:36-38, Luke 17:11-19, and Matthew 14:18-20). We did a jigsaw in teams filling out this paper about who gave thanks, for what, and how they showed it. Then we shared out so we all heard every story!

Once the Bible exploration was done, we got down to some games and crafts! 

Before the kiddos came, I had taped two sets of the letters T-H-A-N-K-F-U-L to the bottom of 16 plastic ducks and hid them around the church. We split into two teams (their favorite: boys against girls!) and raced to find 8 different ducks. They had a blast! Even though the ducks weren't hidden SUPER well (let's be real, I needed to be able to find them afterward!) it was still a challenge to check that they didn't get any doubles. And of course, if they did find a double, they just had to re-hide them in a harder spot so the other team couldn't find them!

Once all the ducks were collected, we wrote the letters on this sheet and each person named one thing they were thankful for that started with that letter. 

Then, they chose one of those items and wrote it on a strip of paper with their name and we played Thanksgiving Guess Who! I pulled a card out of the bag and read it aloud. Each team had 1 guess as to who had written it. I was surprised at how well they did! Of course, it helped that the letters had forced them to write crazy things, like unicorns and turkey!

Our final project was meant to show how incredibly blessed we are as Americans and as Christians. First, we made paper bag cornucopias by twisting the bottom of a bag and then folding back the top.

Then, we filled up our cornucopias with all our blessings by writing things we're thankful for on slips of paper, crumpling them up, and putting them in! It was incredible to see how full and colorful our cornucopias were- and how thankful we need to be for all the amazing things in our lives!

We had a great time being thankful. Now on to the turkey! :)