Vacation Bible School: A Summary

[bard_linn]

Alright, for those of you have never encountered Vacation Bible School, it consists of a week (5 days) long half day camp in which kids do crafts, recreation and music all centered around a religious theme, usually held ata church. This was our church's 26 VBS. In otherwords, it's older than I am.

I've gone to VBS most of my life and for some reason, I decided to help my mother out with music in eight grade (insanity) and have been doing so ever since (even more insanity). By now, this has gotten pretty complicated.

Last year I spend several hours converting old songs from tape to digital format so we could make CDs. So this summer I only had to line the songs up and burn them. I also had to type the lyrics to the new songs, and then had to make up the motions.

See, we use a combination of sign language, slightly altered sigh language and just made up motions along with most of our songs. It help people remember the stuff better - multisensory learning - but you have to be careful they aren't too complicated for the kids or have too many in a spot or too few. In otherwords, it has to flow to the music.

Having completed that, my next challenge was setting up a rehearsal time, which I had to run by myself as my mother (who usually did the leader role; I'm usually the techie) had class almost every day. That went well and all too soon it was off to VBS. Which means getting up so you're at Church - awake and ready - at 8:30 in the morning. Blah.

The week progressed with us having 3 groups as usual, besides opening and closing song session. First, the 3/4s (graders) who were really good this year. Nice and small, numbered 9ish and willing to sing. Usually they fight more. Next came the prek/ks. This group is troublesome. The kids rarely want to sit down and pay attention. Take more time to learn the signs too, because they need more instruction. And they number about 30 strong, give or take. Then we had the 1/2s. These numbered 15ish this year and tend to be the best group as they're young enough to still want to sing, but old enough to read the words.

I ended up teaching most of the classes this year; my mom has carpal tunnel and can't do the signs really anymore. Pretty fun over all though draining. I did get to pull a bunch of aids up who were chit chating instead of helping. >DDDD That was FUN. No goofing off in my class. This does mean you have to teach the same thing three times in a row though. Which isn't fun. Ah well, could be worse.

On Saturday we closed with our usual mass, in which we decorated the church with construction stuff (theme this year) and wore our iron on shirts. (Do one of those every year. We've taken to ironing it on old shirts from previous years. At present we have so many even with Mom, CBL and me wearing one every day we still have leftovers.) Went well over all. The best part has to be all the regular Saturday night goers stare in shock. XDDDDDDDD

In case anyone wants a taste of this crazyness, her is a few of the songs we did this year.

God Is Building Me
Kind Like You
Just Like Jesus

Please note these are the ones we kept. As in, they're the better ones. Yes, I said better. It was a construction theme this year (every year has one. That GOD it wasn't fish again. *shudders*), which is pretty easy to tell. Nor is the normal stuff we usually do for church. This is a once a year deal.