Every summer our church has two VBS programs. The first is for primarily Deaf people who are ages 10 and up. We also include hearing siblings in that age-range who want to come. The second VBS is for young deaf children and deaf parents who have young hearing children. We call that CODA VBS. That program will August 4-8. Last week was Deaf VBS. We had 14 to 15 participants each day.
It was a 9 AM - 3:30 PM program. The theme came from an old Mennonite curriculum called, "Resolving Conflict the Jesus Way". I heavily supplemented with conflict resolution activities and concepts from
Adventures in Peacemaking by Kreidler and Furlong. I praise God for leading me to this theme because it was the perfect way and time to teach this age group about conflict resolution.
The schedule was basically:
- Worship
- reciting memory verses
- the new teaching (Bible story and thematic lesson). This usually included some kind of drama to make it clear.
- a new memory verse and game to learn it
- a craft
- outdoor activities while I prepared lunch
- lunch
- swimming
- We ended about 3:30 when I drove everyone home.
I have included lot of photos. I hope you enjoy seeing the fun we had.
WORSHIP
 |
| Singing |
 |
| Gabriel wanted to stay inside to be part of the fun, but was kind of in the way so he hid under the table to keep from getting stepped on. |
 |
| 8 possible strategies for resolving conflict. |
 |
| Gineli singing |
 |
"Tie us together Lord. Ties us together with cords that cannot be broken." Illustration of how the Holy Spirit binds us together with love.
MEMORY VERSES
Six people learned all four memory verses. Several others learned two or three of them. Everyone learned at least one. Below Monico and Kristel are signing their verses.
DRAMA
In addition to dramatizing the Bible stories, we also did a lot of conflict resolution role-playing where the children were presented with a conflict. They acted it out and then demonstrated stopping to think about which strategy to use to resolve it. We did this "fish bowl" style and let other people jump into the fish bowl if they had a different way to resolve it or if the actors got stuck.
CRAFTS
Crafts were a favorite part of the program.
 
SWIMMING
The Final Day Ice Cream Outing
|
No comments:
Post a Comment