Vacation Bible School

Charlotte's first VBS craft. Behind her, you can see the giant heart on the wall.

Sack race outside. I think this photo is blurry and bad enough that no one is recognizable and thus it is legal to post.

How we kept Charlotte occupied during VBS set up.

My blogging is just out of control these days. I post nothing in order, drafting pieces and then forgetting about them. Little is chronological. Oh well! We had Vacation Bible School (VBS) a week (or two?) ago, and here’s the post:

It has been, oh, 13 or 14 years since I last tinkered in that great summer undertaking we call Vacation Bible School. At our small, quaint church, Chris is the elder of Christian education (it’s okay if you’re surprised—we never exactly advertised this unexpected twist), and VBS falls under his responsibility.

My darling spouse, however, has zero experience in VBS, while his darling wife went every single year until she was too old and then volunteered each year thereafter before leaving for college.

The VBSs of my youth were highly programmed, big-budget, 300-kid type events. I had a blast, both as a kid and later as a helper or teacher. I have fond VBS memories. Why, I met one of my oldest and dearest friends in 4th-grade VBS (Jewels) when she, clad in a pale blue sheet to mimic the Martha Stewart Linen Collection of Biblical times, had to act out the role of the “sinful woman” (I later learned the “sinful woman” was an adulteress). I was a stone thrower.

Anyway, Chris said he reaaaaaaally needed my help, and I had promised him I’d help as I could when he agreed to be an elder this past winter. (Does the word “elder” bring to anybody else’s mind the image of Rafiki, the baboon elder in The Lion King? No? Just me? Okay then.) I was a little nervous, as it had been a long time since I had dabbled in VBS or worked with this age group, plus I didn’t want to step on anybody’s toes. I mean, VBS had been going on in this small church since long before we moved to town.

Still, we needed a plan. And volunteers. Chris FINALLY nailed down dates, did the necessary PR, fretted a lot, and then buttered me up to take this off his hands with lines like, “This is essentially project management. It’s what you do for a living!”

So, with no real authority to plan VBS, I started planning VBS. Fortunately, a mother-daughter duo in our church has been the cornerstone of VBS since forever, and they were more than willing to be VBS gurus yet again. Phew. They took on a TON of the planning.

In the meantime, we needed a curriculum. The idea of buying a VBS curriculum was sort of laughable with our budget. I mean, I have no problem with for-profit publishers and companies making mountains of money with their cutesy themes, catchy songs, and prettily packaged Jesus messages, but they are REALLY expensive for small churches and just not worth it. Although I had a couple moments of panic and longing for a pre-set curriculum, I came to appreciate the more organic nature of building our own.

We needed something kid-friendly, not fire-and-brimstone-y, and able to hold even the shortest attention spans. I asked Chris what he thought about a theme about love—showing love to your family, friends, strangers, community and thus reflecting God’s love (I mean, we love because he first loved us, y’all), and he said to go for it. Of course, I think he would’ve said yes no matter what, even if I suggested an in-depth study of the book of Ezekiel.

Miraculously, someone on Facebook posted a link to her blog in which she had thoughtfully taught her kids about love, and I found it incredibly clever, well-planned, sweet, and not run-of-the-mill. She enthusiastically gave permission for us to adapt it for a group for VBS, so we had one really solid night of learnin’ planned.

Oh, and did I mention we needed games? And crafts? And snacks? And music?

Anyway, I cobbled together an outline for the week to get us going, then we met with the volunteers. Our church might be small, but it has VERY dedicated members. I told them about a billion times that I was not married to the curriculum outline—I just wanted to get a starting point from which to build, but they assured me it was just fine and took off with all sorts of creative ideas to build on the theme of love. One activity included a GIANT heart outline on lots of butcher paper, which the kids filled with their handprints (via paint) at the beginning of each night. The leaders had the bucket of sudsy water and towels set up, ready to go—something I would’ve totally overlooked. The kids LOVED this activity.

A super enthusiastic woman led the music and did an amazing job. All the songs were about love, she embellished them with fun kid wackiness, and the kids just had a ball. Had. A. Ball.  

Snacks also reflected the theme, from heart-shaped Jell-o jigglers to heart brownies to heart cookies to heart Rice Krispie treats. Again, the other volunteers delegated and executed. Chris and I had nothing to do with snacks, short of providing a Costco-sized box of fish crackers for those needing or wanting an alternative to the snack. (For example, one child found Jell-o absolutely freaky and just couldn’t eat something that wiggled that much.)

Each evening featured several crafts to fill up time, as these kids plowed through their projects super fast. I contributed a couple craft ideas, activities, and whatnot, but the majority of it was handled by the other volunteers. I was responsible for games, which was actually a lot of fun, and I think my crowning achievement for the week was the obstacle course I concocted. Do you know how many times kids are willing to go through an obstacle course? About a thousand. Methinks they all slept pretty well that night.

The first night of VBS, we started with a broader discussion of love, why we love, and why we should show love, and I had pictures and props to visually represent care, time, and resources (from that mommy’s blog I mentioned). A couple crafts later, that aspect was pulled full circle, sending the kids on the Easter egg hunt to find a fake dollar, a band-aid, and a picture of a clock. I worried that they’d be all disappointed about the lack of candy in the eggs, but I was wrong. Never, ever underestimate the thrill of a treasure hunt, as that blog had said. The kids then cut out giant hearts and glued these items to the hearts. The next day, they remembered all three elements as ways to show love. How’s that for information retention, eh?

I handled the Bible story/verse the first four nights, and some parts went great and others I way over-estimated the reading comprehension level of young children, or the attention spans of little boys in general. Also, I’m fine with kids one-on-one, but I have zero classroom management skills. Fortunately, a first-grade teacher was there to RUN practically everything, and she was just fantastic.

I had (at least) one giant screw-up on the night I attempted to teach the kiddos about showing love in the community. Complete with a Christmas-gift prop, I gave an example of how our church “adopts” several local families at Christmas who don’t have a lot of money, providing them with Christmas gifts they otherwise wouldn’t have.

Out of nowhere, one little boy hit me with, “But what about Santa Claus?”

Santa hadn’t crossed my mind. Obviously. And, following little-kid logic, he wanted to know why poor children needed the church to buy them presents when Santa Claus would come no matter what?

Ummmmm . . . .

I did my best to be vague and noncommittal, and eventually just let the kids veer off topic into oodles of Santa comparison stories to help them forget they ever questioned his goodness. It worked, and I was able to close the lesson with an example of children and famine in Africa, complete with a little pot prop actually from Kenya.

Chris, ray of sunshine that he is, asked me afterward if I thought death by starvation was an appropriate thing to teach small children. I sighed. Probably not, but I did frame the topic as the threat of starvation, and put it in the context of people from around the world doing all sorts of things to raise funds to help them, skipping the reality that getting aid to women and children was sabatoged and blocked by violence. I told Chris that some of the kids WERE old enough to understand that the globe does not have an even playing field, these kids have a whole lot, and millions of other children do not.

Anyway, it was a gratifying albeit rather stressful week. Working all day then racing to the church for a few hours of VBS in the evening, especially with Charlotte, was quite the juggling act. We also hit a few bumps that week, unrelated to VBS, with Charlotte getting a brief 103-degree temperature and staying home a day, news of my failure of the prenatal glucose test, learning of a huge problem with the timing Lorelei’s start date at day care, and worst of all, a close friend’s really rotten, unfair, and devastating news.

At the end of the week, Chris oh so sweetly said he wanted to say thanks for helping him so much with VBS. He took Charlotte all day Saturday, so I could catch up on household things, read a little, and work on my manuscript. I thought that was so sweet, and I really didn’t deserve it (but was SO not going to decline the gift of time—oooh! Time as a Way To Show Love! Chris was listening that night!), so on Friday night, while sneakily baking as he attended the last night of VBS, I surprised him with a peach cobbler when he got home, telling him that not a lot of men could’ve done that much hands-on VBS-ness. Sure, VBS was ultimately his responsibility, and lots of volunteers gave lots of time and talent to make it really great for the kids, but he too stepped up, spent a lot of time at the church each night (before taking Charlotte home to bed), and was as involved as he could be, especially for a guy not used to kids, totally new to VBS, and up against a mountain of icky stuff at work. Chris never complained and accepted VBS as part of him serving as elder—it was that simple for him.