Great Vacation Bible School
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Great Vacation Bible School |
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Great Resources for your Vacation Bible School Vacation Bible School Curriculum Newest in Action and Fun Songs
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Vacation Bible School Really Special 2. Involve the entire church in the Vacation Bible School. 3. Advertise where the kids are. 6. Use every opportunity to teach in your Vacation Bible School. 8. Train all the volunteers that serve in your Vacation Bible School. 9. Show your volunteers you really appreciate them. 10. Use puppets, drama and fun music. Vacation Bible School is an awesome opportunity to impact children with the message of God's love. 1. Get prayer support. I am convinced a great theme and decorations are not enough to have a great Vacation Bible School. If your goal is to impact lives you need more than great curriculum and dedicated workers-you need God's help. You need the convicting power of the Holy Spirit if you want to see life changing results. If you want life changing results in your Vacation Bible School you must birth it in prayer. Besides committing yourself to pray that God will change lives involve others in prayer. Give out prayer cards to every member of your church. Visit the ladies and men's groups to enlist their prayer support specifically. Set some spiritual goals. How many children do you want to see make a decision for Christ? Ask people to pray with you for that number to be saved. Ask people to pray that lost children will attend the Vacation Bible School. Ask God to prepare the hearts of children that the words they hear will be understood and received. Encourage the people to pray that children will experience the presence of God and His love in Vacation Bible School this year. Ask people to pray for the workers that God will make them a channel for His love and peace to flow through. You might want to give them a sample prayer so everyone will be praying the same things. Such as the one below. Father, in the name of Jesus I thank that your word says you will give unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness. I thank you for giving us all the provisions we need for this VBS to fulfill your plan for it. We have all the people, all the staff, all the patience, all the love, all the resources that we need according to your riches in glory. I pray that you will draw children that you plan to be here to our Vacation Bible School. Let the hearts of our volunteers and church be sensitive and responsive to invite children and families to this Vacation Bible School. Help our advertising to be effective. Give us wisdom and diligence to do what we need to do to communicate this event to the community. I pray that you will cause children to want to attend this vacation bible school. I pray that the love of God will be shed abroad by the Holy Spirit through every volunteer and that love would touch every child that enters our doors. I pray that you would be present in every class room to impact their lives and let them experience your presence. I pray that children will come to know your as their Savoir and be filled to overflowing with your Holy Spirit. I pray that the faith of believers will be strengthen and that they would develop deeper roots in your word. Father, we are laborers together with God and I pray that You will enable us to communicate the gospel effectively. As we sow the precious word of God you promised that it would not return to you void, but it would accomplish what you planned. I pray that you will give the children hearing ears and seeing eyes. I ask that the word would fall on good ground, that it would produce fruit and that the fruit would remain. I ask that the children that attend this VBS would fall in love with Jesus. That they would become followers of the Lord as dear children. I ask you to protect these children from the evil one. Protect them from ungodly influences. Help them to never take drugs. Never drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes. Help them to walk in obedience to your word and know the height and breath and depth of your love. Help them to discover your purpose for their lives and fulfill that destiny. 2. Involve the entire church in the Vacation Bible School. I know it is easy to resolve in your mind that your church just doesn't love children's ministry, but what better opportunity for them to catch a vision of what can happen in children's ministry than through Vacation Bible School. Be sure to communicate your vision for this year's Vacation Bible School to the entire church and not just your Vacation Bible School staff. Once people catch the vision they can invite the children in their neighborhood. They can put flyers in their local convenience stores or help you contact children that attended Vacation Bible School in previous years. There are numerous small jobs that people are willing to do if you divide the load, so no you do not overwhelm a volunteer. Don't overlook senior citizens. While they may not want to teach a class there are many support roles they can fill that will make the teacher's load much easier. Organizing, sewing, recruiting, telephone calls, snacks, room set up, photography are just a few. Begin to list your needs and think of specific people in your church that can fill that need. 3. Go where the kids are. 4.Use black light puppetry. I can not think of anything that is more exciting than black light puppetry. It can be used for beginning puppet teams just as long as you can darken the room. We have some very inexpensive black light puppets and a Black light training video that will help you get started. If you haven't tried black light, believe me it is INCREDIBLE! The puppets glow brightly in the dark room under a black light. The puppets can seem to appear and disappear out of no where.
5.Use
fun music.
Click on the picture for more details Ablaze With Praise and Fired UP are great resources to help you plan a complete song service, action, praise and worship songs as well.
You will also need some songs that lead the children into a quiet time for prayer and serious thought. Worship Series 1 & 2 and Ablaze With Praise and Fired Up have upbeat songs as well as songs to lead children into quiet worship. 6. Use every opportunity to teach in your Vacation Bible School.
Change the
bulletin boards in your room to reflect the unit theme verse. Make sure the
crafts are more than entertaining. They should drive home the lesson
objective. Talk to the children while they work on their crafts. Get to know
them. Ask questions to see what they are learning from the lessons. Discover
how they are applying the information to their lives, not what they have
learned from rote memory. Use scriptures set to music as the children enter
and leave your class. Play scripture music as the students work on their
craft.
7. Use great visuals. It is important that you grab and keep the attention of your audience. Visuals will help you do that. Even the best Vacation Bible School curriculum can be enhanced and personalized by adding great visuals. Illusions, Object Lessons and story bags and object lessons are effective visuals to use in your Vacation Bible School. Story Bags are fabric bags made from a mixture of prints and solids that are turned inside out again and again as you tell the story. Children are not surprised when you turn the bag once, but then when you turn it again and again they are amazed. The bag comes with a complete Bible story to guide you when to turn to the next color. Stories include Creation, Deborah, David, Elijah, Esther, Jonah, Moses, Noah, Paul, Peter, Ruth, Salvation, Easter and Christmas. New bags that will be introduced soon are Joseph,
8. Train all the volunteers that serve in your Vacation Bible School. So often we assume people know how to do what we want them to do. Some of your staff have experience and training but so many of your worker would benefit from basic teacher training, classroom management techniques or puppet manipulation training. Schedule a morning of training or you could a training session with one of your workdays. Use one of your best teachers to train the others or use one of our videos. The Skill Track is a 4 video set that could be checked out and used at home or in a training session. Priced at $60.00 for 4 videos it is a value too good to pass up. Or you can purchase any of the videos individually for $19.95. I hope you have a wonderful Vacation Bible School that will impact lives for eternity. What you are doing is really important and only eternity will reveal the results.
9. Show your volunteers you
really appreciate them. In our zeal to minister to the children, sometimes we forget the volunteers are a vital part of the Vacation Bible School ministry. Little expressions of appreciation go a long way. Steve Greer has some awesome ideas to help you express your appreciation in inexpensive way that will mean so much to your volunteers. 10. Use puppets, drama and fun music. Make your Vacation Bible School really fun. Fun is the bait that attracts kids and you don't want to be guilty of false advertising. Puppets is an easy way to have fun. Use the youth in your church as puppeteers. Use fun songs like the parodies or the Righteous Pop Music or Jim Wideman's Puppet Trax. Music is easy for even a beginning puppeteer. Introduce a new puppet character that can be the MC for your group time in the Vacation Bible School. Our great prices on people Puppets makes that more affordable than ever. We have moveable mouth puppets beginning as low as $9.95. Dress your puppets in clothing that fits with the theme of the Vacation Bible School.
Skits are always a big hit with any audience. Children enjoy participating and it is a great way to disciple children in ministry. Involve children in clown troupes to do skits or at the very least to greet your children as they arrive for the Vacation Bible School.
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You
can use a full bodied puppet to greet the children as they come in the door,
to make announcements or introduce the theme for the day. The bright fish
puppets will make a big splash if you are using a nautical theme. Have a
spunky granny and a hard of hearing 
