Salem VBS

 COVID-19 has certainly changed the way everything operates this year! Instead of holding a huge on-campus Vacation Bible School this summer, the children's ministry team at our church moved everything online. They created videos for each day and sent out instructions to run five stations of activities for five days. Our family didn't do the five VBS days all in a row, but we did select our favorite activites to do over the course of a couple weeks. Daddy was still on vacation and was even able to participate with us for a few of the days.

BIBLE TIME

We started each day by watching the Bible time video. It included some catchy songs that the kids (sometimes) enjoyed dancing to.

Each video included a presentation of the daily theme and a brief Bible story lesson by a different church leader. Daddy was even the leader one day!

GAMES

Not surprisingly, our kids were most excited about doing games next. We typically put Jaden and Cody on the same team against Mommy and Daddy or against Mommy and Adley to assure that everyone ended in a good mood. :) During the week, we did relay races...

with Adley as our timekeeper!

More relay races...

balloon baseball-- blindfolded!...

a tag game that even included some neighbor friends...

and a racing game involving cups.

MISSIONS

Another station involved doing craft activities that could be used to bless others. Our favorite missions activity was decorating eyeglass cases that will be taken to Kenya on our church's next Eyeglass Clinic Mission Trip. We loved this hands-on way of getting involved!

For the next activity, our leaders wanted us to remember to be thankful in prayer all throughout our day. We printed off "thankful cards" and hung them in various places around our home as reminders to talk to God. We kept these signs up for several weeks.

The kids also liked decorating these cross suncatchers. They were encouraged to share their completed crafts with somebody else. Jaden and Adley gave their crosses to grandparents, while Cody gifted his to one of our neighbors, a sweet lady who lives on her own. This neighbor said the gift made her day!

SNACKS

Each day also included options of snacks that tied into the daily theme. Some days even included "building" with their food. The kids, of course, loved having permission to play with their food!

The final station was a "Family Chat Time" where we were given questions to talk about that related to our daily theme. We were encouraged to share pics of our family doing these VBS activities on our church's online Children's ministry page. It was fun seeing other families doing similar activities and fostered an important sense of community. We were thankful for our amazing Children's Ministry team that planned this wonderful, unique, and Christ-centered week for us!