Weird Animals VBC – Day 1

This week it’s Vacation Bible Camp (VBC) at FUMC…

Where Jesus’ Love is One-Of-a-Kind!

First some important stuff for adults…

Each year we choose a VBC mission for kids to support. This year we have three projects:

1. Collecting boxes of cereal for Ann Arbor’s own Bryant Community Center.

2. Collecting monetary donations that will fund the John Dean Health Project, which will provide 18 remote villages in Liberia with a well, a latrine, mosquito nets and a traditional birth attendant.

3. And new this year, collecting gently used children’s books and toys for Alpha House. A great opportunity for kids to be involved in a hands-on way. With parent’s help, they can select items from their own shelves to pass on to someone else to use and enjoy!

All offerings can be turned in at the start of VBC each day at the front of the Sanctuary. Thanks!

Now, here’s what your kids did today…

First, we all gathered in the jungle-inspired, wonderfully decorated Sanctuary at Sing & Play Stampede.

We learned our wild, fun theme song, “All Around the World.” (Click on the song title to go to YouTube to watch a short bit of the song.) We had fun learning other new songs, with cool motions to go along with them.

Because the Bible is God’s very own word to us, and we learn so many things from the Bible, each day we’ll learn a special Bible Point. Today we learned that….

Even when you’re left out…Jesus loves you!

We said that a lot today! I bet your kids remember it.

We also met a couple of very interesting characters: Dr. Paws and Axl, the Axolotls. Dr. Paws is our world-famous zookeeper and know-it-all about the world’s weirdest animals. He will be visiting with his weird animals all week long! Who is Axl? Axl is one weird animal! Axl is our Bible Memory Buddy for the day. All week long, we’ll get to know cool – and kind of weird – Bible Memory Buddies who will help us remember our Bible verses. Today’s Bible verse is…

“I am with you always, even to the end of the age” Matthew 28:20

See, each Bible Memory Buddy has the verse printed on it!

With Bible Buddies we’re sending scripture home!

And there is a free app for your smart phone or tablet that can continue the fun with your Bible Buddies. Check it out on iTunes or Google Play.

We also found out that each day we would get to experience an exciting story from the Bible when we visited the drama station (which is called “Bible Adventures”). In today’s Bible Adventure, we learned how Jesus helped people who were left out. Read about it in Luke 17:11-19

The preschoolers went off to their special rooms in Ozzy’s Preschool Park and did the following…

• Games – the wet playground did not slow us down today, we played fun games inside like Send a Friend, Balloon buddies, and Moo-sical Chairs.
• Bible Adventures & Missions – got “spots” to see what it was like for lepers to be sick and left out, and hugged each other to experience the love Jesus showed the lepers when he healed them.
• KidVid Cinema – Chadder the Chipmunk, a VBC cinema tradition retires, ushering in a new era of learning and exploration. All week, we will learn about kids who have a situation to overcome. Today, we learned about a boy named Satish who finds an unexpected, nontraditional family when he moves to a children’s home.
• Craft & Play – Did a fun crafty experiment involving Kool-Aid drink mix and spray bottles (ask them about it!) and were magnet miners – mined for magnets in playground sand.

Meanwhile, elementary kids visited the following stations…

• One-Of-a-Kind Bible Adventures – In this station, kids get to hear our Bible story in an awesome, interactive way. Today, they missed out on fun and food as they pretended to be lepers, were affirmed by crew leaders that Jesus loves them, and were given Bible bands to wear to remember that they’re never left out with Jesus.
• Untamed Games – The wet weather kept us inside, but didn’t slow us down.  We played: Chain Relay, Shrinking Islands, and Zoo Crew Tag.
• KidVid Cinema – Chadder the Chipmunk, a VBC cinema tradition retires, ushering in a new era of learning and exploration. All week, we will learn about kids who have a situation to overcome. Today, we learned about a boy named Satish who finds an unexpected, nontraditional family when he moves to a children’s home.
• Imagination Station – We had some great discussion (“sinking feelings” and ways we have felt left out) and did a cool construction project:  boats using tin foil, foam, qtips, and tape, made to represent God’s love.  We then tested the boats in water and added pennies (representing “sinking feelings”).

Our oldest elementary kids in our Grad Group are working every day this week on various mission projects – both local and global! Today, they got to know each through ice breakers, learned about our Liberia mission project, played some fun games on the Wesley lawn, did some work to organize the week’s mission projects, and spoke to everyone (at our Tail End finale) about mission projects. A great first day!

We get hungry in the jungle, so at 10:20 each day, we gather in the Critter Café for a delicious snack; today we had One-derful parfaits (made from yogurt and fruit cocktail). We also spent time getting to know our crews a bit better and recorded some of our “God Sightings.”

At the very end of our day, we all come together for the Tail End Finale. We sang some more of the cool Weird Animals songs and watched an experiment that shows how Jesus’ powerful love helps us when we feel alone. It involved disappearing ink…

Continue the learning at home!

Here are a couple of questions to talk about around the family dinner table:

• Have everyone share a story of when they were “left out.” (Carol remembers the summer she had a “cold” and couldn’t go out to play. Later it turned out to be allergies!)
• Lepers had a skin disease. In Bible times the laws said that people who had leprosy couldn’t be anywhere near other people. But Jesus changed that! Ask your child(ten) to retell our Bible story.
• Being left out can make us feel alone. This is something that happens to everyone now and then. What sort of clues can help us to be aware that someone is feeling left out?
• What can we do to help someone who is left out?

See you tomorrow!
~~ The VBC Team