Vacation Bible School

Our first VBS for the church here is officially over.  It was kind of decided upon late, but I think it was a success.  We had about 15 kids each day.  Hopefully when we do it next year we can get the word out a little earlier and have more kids join us.  Or not--I don't really think the number of participants determines whether your VBS is a success or not.

We started off each day with songs.  I love the fact that Hubby is not afraid to act silly when he is teaching these songs.  His ability to really get into the songs and the motions and laugh at himself helps put the kids at ease and hopefully helps them want to participate as well.  One of the Moms told us today that even though her girls didn't necessarily sing the songs at the VBS, they were singing some of the songs at home.  That to me is a success!

After songs Hubby told the accounts of Esther, Joseph and David.  Our theme was Kingdom Kids so the point of the stories was to show how God used people who were young and not very important to do great things.  Once again, Hubby did a great job drawing the kids into the story by having them make sound effects while he was telling the account.  This isn't necessarily an original idea, but I think it is an effective one.  I can still remember going to a youth meeting when I was a teenager where a preaching did the exact same thing.  I remember which Biblical account it was, as well as the sound effects the audience made.  Hubby's assistants were not always perfect at holding up the prompts for the sounds effects, but that is what he gets for pulling them up front at the last second.  Want to guess who was an assistant all three mornings?

Next was crafts--my portion of the morning.  Are you wondering why I, of all people, was put in charge of crafts?  Me too!  But since I also didn't want to come up with games or provide food, crafts was the only thing left.  Luckily for me, Oriental Trading has these great crafts that come all pre-packaged and are no-brainers at figuring out.  My kind of crafts!  The biggest mistake I made was thinking I could have an older kids craft and a younger kids craft.  I should know from have four children of different ages that once the younger kids saw the older kids doing something they would want to do what the older kids were doing.  We made it work, but next year there will be one craft for everyone!

Moving cotton balls with your nose

Throwing cocoa puffs at the whipped cream plate

Dressing up and singing

As soon as the crafts were all done we played games.  The Mom in charge did an awesome job coming up with activities that encompassed a broad range of ages and kept everyone involved as much as possible.  I think no matter what games you play you'll always have trouble keeping small children's attention for longer than a second, so I think everything she did was awesome!  Especially since I didn't have to do any of the planning!

We ended up by watching the Veggie Tales movie of whichever person we talked about that day.  Watching the movie was Hubby's idea and it turned out to be a perfect way to settle the kids back down before eating lunch.  Some of the older kids said that they thought the movies were boring, but I noticed that they sat and watched the whole movie every day.  Imagine that!

Of course, our mornings would not have run as smoothly as they did without the other adults who were there providing support, running to get anything we forgot, bringing lunch and just generally being there for anything that popped up.  We couldn't have pulled it off without everyone who was there!

Today to close everything out we went bowling.  It ended on a slightly sour note with an injury, non-bowling related, but other than that everyone who came had a good time.  Our girls really loved it.  Which means that I'll probably have to make sure I actually take advantage of the Kids Bowl Free program we're signed up for this summer!

I really think that the VBS was a great success.  My favorite part about a VBS, or really anything else the church does that involves all the kids, is how much closer I feel to everyone who came.  There was fellowship with the other adults in the short moments when we weren't busy doing something else, and we got to know all the kids better as well.  I love it when I see the kids at church after something like this and they talk to me about their favorite song or which craft was their favorite.  They may not remember what all we did at VBS for very long, but hopefully they'll at least remember that they had fun!