Out of this World - VBS

At UCC, Vacation Bible School is on of the biggest events we do each year. VBS it a big part of our community outreach and each year we have as many as 30-50 families and/or kids visit our church, some for the very first time. It takes so many people to make VBS a success. 5 years ago one of the ladies at our church went to our preacher with it on her heart to start VBS at our church. With the warning that it would take a lot of work, and that getting volunteers for events like these is difficult, she went ahead full force. That summer she and the volunteers that worked with her, came up with an amazing original VBS and it has been going strong ever sense. That happened to be my first year here and since that summer I have worked with her as we have prepared VBS. If you work with kids you know events like these start taking place months before the actual event. We begin talking about next years theme at the end of the current VBS, and planning and emails start going out somewhere in February - even though VBS doesn't actually occur until the middle of July! At UCC we have made each VBS an original unique event. No VBS is quite like ours as members of our church write our skits, Bible story lessons, curriculum for toddlers, hand pick the crafts and make up fun new games. It is truly an act of the whole church body! Below I will tell you a little bit more about each aspect of our yearly VBS as well as have pictures of each thing.

As the planning for VBS gets underway we begin with a theme. While we take suggestions from the kids, we look at themes that will be doable. We look for crafts on this theme that can be purchased, decorations easy to assemble and obtain and Bible stories of course that will fit into that theme. We picked Outer Space this year and it was a BLAST! (Literally!)
We begin with a design. One of the ladies at our church who is an artist and owns her own design company comes up with our tshirt/banner and flyer design each year. Here is a picture of the shirts. On the front is the theme "Out of this World" with a rocket and the earth, and on the back is the Bible verse that we built our theme from "...but be transformed by changing the way you think." Romans 12:2.

Next, after the design and the theme is chosen, we start thinking decorations. For the foyer (where we do registration) we decorated as a NASA Mission Control. We drew out the logo on the wall and then had mission control center set up for the kids to play on as they come in and register.

The auditorium is another big part of decorating. One of the men in our congregation is an engineer. He designed our rocket ship in his garage! It was 14 feet tall, made hollow inside so that the skit astronauts could climb inside and the top opened up as well. The backdrop was black table clothes with Christmas lights poked through in holes to look like stars. We had 2 rockets on either side of the stage made from paper as well as a planet. 

The kids begin in the auditorium. They sit with their specific grades with 2-3 adult leaders and 2-3 teen leaders. After singing and skit in the auditorium we break out for 15 minute sessions rotating through games, snack, crafts and Bible stories.

 

The Bible stories we chose to do were "The Good Samaritan" and "Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch" (found in Acts 8). Both stories are about looking outside of oneself (out of this world - get it?) to helping others and showing them kindness and most importantly showing them Jesus. These two rooms were decorated like Bible scenes, and actors were dressed in Bible costumes to act out these stories.

Snacks was run by some fabulous ladies. After the kids were served snacks they made a fun decoration to help them decorate the snack room. They made rockets, aliens, or colored pictures each night to post around the room.

Crafts were ordered from www.orientaltrading.com - we made monster masks which were the biggest hit ever! The other crafts were small space paintings (which they colored with fabric markers), alien picture frames, and they decorated their own name tags with space stickers and they hung them around their necks with beads. The toddler and preschool crafts were star clappers, monster masks, and alien sticker pictures.

Games were run by our youth minister and some of our dads. They did a great job! On the last night we provided bounce houses for the kids and of course those were a hit.

I think by far the BEST thing about this years VBS was the skits in the auditorium. My husband wrote the skits, but what was so impressive was the people who were our actors and our director! They were amazing! We ordered astronaut costumes online (Halloween costumes) and then the aliens made their own costumes which were unique each night. Each night the astronauts visited a different planet where they tried to teach the aliens of the planet how to live the right way and be transformed. They had to get to them before the Evil Emperor was able to keep them in their old way of life. (One of our dad's wrote an original song about being transformed by the renewing of our minds and the blood of Jesus Christ. Awesome and very catchy.) Here some pictures of the skits and costumes. Incredible!

This blog post wouldn't be complete without mentioning the people who worked with the little ones. We had a nursery, toddler and preschool class for our VBS workers. Instead of rotating these groups the leaders had a schedule. They took them to the playground, had a snack brought in, a craft to make with them and a puppet show instead of a Bible skit. The puppet skits were about kindness, lying, and obedience. 

On the last night we had a drawing from each group. The group leader adults nominated a handful of kids from their group who they saw having good attitudes and being "transformed" throughout the week. From this, I drew 3 names and these kids got a gift basket of space and alien toys and trinkets and they also got to throw a pie in the face of one of our actors. Much to my dismay these sweet kids kept calling my name and so one of our elders went ahead and pied me as well! That was a riot. I think the kids were very excited to see me pied. 

Here are a few more pictures to finish out the blog! It was so much fun and probably my favorite VBS we've done here at UCC. God bless and see you guys for VBS next year.

These picture booths were outside for kids to have their pictures taken behind.

On the last night we let the kids dress up. This year they were aliens. This was my favorite costume:)

Our mission project. We filled this refrigerator this much with individually wrapped snacks for our Senior Highs mission project.





Treasure Island

For the past 6 weeks my congregation has put on an event that I have named "Treasure Island." All of the kids in our congregation K-6th grade have met weekly in the auditorium on Wednesday nights (instead of individual classes). In the creation of Treasure Island I came up with the following goals - to show the kids about the treasure of God's word and to help them learn to navigate fully through his word in order to form a deeper desire for him and relationship with him. Using the teens in our congregation as team leaders to each grade of kids (3-4 teens for each grade of 10-15 kids), we were able to accomplish all of our goals.

Step 1 - Decorating - We decorated our auditorium. We do not have a gym or other large room facilities for our children's ministry, so we often get permission to use the auditorium for large group activities like this. We put up a large tent, ocean scene backgrounds, fish and nets, hanging palm trees, a surf board and lawn chairs. On one side of the stage is a "Treausre Table" with Treasures such as children's dictionaries, bibles, kids praise cd's and Bible games. On the corners of the stage are treasure boxes full of candy.

Step 2 - Activities - Each night of the 6 weeks I came up with an activity that all of the kids could participate in and that would help further the goal of helping them learn to use God's word.

Week 1 - We decorated Treasure Chests. These can be purchased in various forms from Orientaltrading.com. We decorated these chests with paint pens, glitter and stickers and filled them with the scriptures we would be learning each week for the 6 weeks of Treasure Island.

Week 2 - Scripture Scavenger Hunt - I got this idea from googling "Bible Treasure Hunts". I gave each group 13 scripture references. Each group had to look up the scriptures and then go collect the item that the scripture named. For instance we used the passage Matthew 7:25 which reads "The rains came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat agasint that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock." The clue was "rock" and the kids had to find a rock to complete the first clue. The first group in K-2nd that completed this hunt got a prize (gold chocolate candy) and the first group in 3rd -6th grade got the same prize.

Week 3 - Decorating Shovels. I purchased wooden handled shovels from Wal-Mart for about $5 each. Each group (grade) recieved a shovel and were asked to look up scriptures. They had to use the color or item mentioned in the scriptures to decorate their shovel. For instance if the scripture said something about feathers, they had to find a way to attach feathers to the shovel. I also had each group write a scripture on the shovel that had something to do with treasure (I supplied the 6 verses we were learning). When each group was done they were able to show and present their shovels to the other groups.

Week 4 - Discussion - we took a break from crafts and had a week of discussion. I wanted to make sure that some of the things we had been talking about were sinking in for them. I had the teens lead the group and ask various questions such as "Your mom asks you as you are getting in bed if you remembered to do your homework for tomorrow. You are very tired so you say "yes", even though you really havne't done it. Is this a right decision or a wrong decision?" The children are allowed to answer what they think and then as a group they looked up Colossians 3:9-10. These are verses about telling the truth. We did about 10 questions like this. I wanted to show them that when they have questions about what is right or wrong that they can find these answers in the scriptures. God's word is very clear about how we should live and what we should or shouldn't do. 

Week 5 - Treasure Maps - I had each group decorate a treasure map. I used large pieces of butcher paper and tore the edges of it to make it look old. The groups had to have 3 points on the map, a starting place, a name for their Island and an X to mark the spot for the treasure. I wanted their treasures to be something spiritual. Some of the kids put "Sharing our food" while another group put "Loving others" as their treasures. 

Week 6 - Treasure Hunt - This is different from the scavenger hunt in that I had the kids look up scriptures as before, but instead of collecting various items like rocks and grass they just had to find the next clue. Clue 1 lead to Clue 2 and so on until they found the treasure. Each group followed the same clues and all of them lead to individual treasure for each group. 

Each night we had a scripture verse for the kids to learn. There are many scriptures on Treasures in heaven, or the treasure of God's word or the Kingdom of God. An example I used is Psalm 119:11 "I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you." After every evening a child would get a treasure (candy or small toy) out of the treasure box for being able to tell their leaders their memory verses. Children could also get treasures for bringing friends or bringing their Bibles. 2 names were drawn every night for the larger prizes such as the Bibles, games or CD's. 

During this time the kids learned a books of the Bible song. They learned the Old Testament song. After much searching I found a song that works for us. The kids have been able to learn it and it has a catchy tune. It's by the McLean family singers and can be found at www.christiansoup.com. The books of the New Testament song is also on this CD. We used the old 'standby' version that most people seem to know. 

Nursery, Toddler and Preschool classes were also offered and taught by volunteers. I had a simple "pirate/treasure" craft for these classes as well as a Bible story and simple games to go along with it. 

Treasure Island was a success. It gave the kids a new desire to read their bibles, bring their Bibles and friends to church and see that church is an exciting and fun place to get to know the Lord.