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!