Dec 26, 2019
“We heard at this year’s General Conference that the Riverside, CA, church prepared their own custom VBS curriculum and asked Vicki Burdick to tell us how she did it. She graciously agreed, and we hope this will encourage our readers to consider how they can show and share the love of Jesus to the kids God gives them.” —Nick
By Vicki Burdick
After the 2018 Vacation Bible School, our Christian Education Committee decided to write our own curriculum focusing on the “Fruits of the Spirit” found in Galatians. By starting early and delegating to our small group, the co-directors weren’t overwhelmed at the last moment and we also saved a great deal of money.
Three of us met in September to start planning our program. We came with craft ideas from Pinterest, songs from YouTube, and many curriculums downloaded from homeschooling websites.
Many of us did double duty—such as, the game leader also ran the live stream songs on the iPad/projector, a co-director also helped with games, and all of the teachers did their own craft projects.
We have an amazing volunteer, Rocky, who is unable to attend VBS midweek because she’s a full-time caregiver for her mother. She plans all of our crafts, purchases the material, makes a finished example to show the teachers, and also packages the kits into bags to put into the classroom bins. She designed individually labeled bins for each classroom to hold craft packages, nightly hand-outs, messages, changes in class lists, and anything else that needed to be given out.
knowledge and idea concept, light bulb flying on blue sky and releasing letter for wisdom
We’ve had volunteers each year provide dinners for the evening and accept donations which cover the cost of the food. This helps the VBS workers and makes sure that everyone is on time.
We also have snack time where the students sit around a long table, with their teachers, and the Snack Teacher connects the treat to the memory verse for the night. This gives the kids one more time to reinforce the scripture.
Another segment takes the kids to a separate teacher and location to discuss the Bible character. This year there were costumes and story boards.
We’ve divided our time into 20-minute increments and the kids rotate between stations: outside games, snacks, Bible characters, opening ceremony, closing ceremony, lesson, crafts, and clean up, along with 5 minutes for passing between each segment.
Using the internet for videos was a free way to use action visuals for both the staff and the kids. Here are the links to the songs that we used during the week:
https://youtu.be/ssksy9rvxny
https://youtu.be/dfumjslls68s
https://youtu.be/zztfefn5c5
https://youtu.be/xwowdded-ns
https://youtu.be/n2r4d6qhad8
