Creativity Remix-SUMMER CAMP

We just finished our first week of SUMMER CAMP (VBS). This is our fourth year to do it off site at the Boys/Girls Club just down the street from the church. This is also our first year to split the camps into two weeks (younger and older). I think that went well!

Let me just remind you that all of our prep has to be off site (food, media,etc) and we can't get in the facility until 30 minutes before--so it's hectic each day moving in and moving out, setting up and taking down and all of it in the heat of the day when it's about 1000 degrees in the building. But the kids love it.

The set this year is simple--we reused some of our backdrops (www.backdrops.us) tha we've used in the past and painted graffiti on them with the summer camp logo. We're also using a SHOE theme since we collected shoes in April and May to give away at the end of the week.

Traci (children's minister) did a great job of simply explaining the gospel with 2 rolls of carpet (one with SIN on it and the other with TRUSTING JESUS). She used different pairs of shoes to ask the kids to guess where these shoes were going (tennis shoes=sports; dress shoes=church; house shoes=sleep,etc). Each night she built upon the story with a Stop sign and a Yield sign. It was all so creative and simple. The kids really got the message.

It just reminded me that whatever we do to teach the gospel that it should add to the understanding of the message of Christ. All of these visuals really communicated to these K-3rd graders the simple message of christ's love. Many of them had never heard it before---isn't that what VBS is suppose to be about?

What creative things have you used to teach the gospel?