VBS

 

Vacation Bible School

We’re now on the VBS committee. An ambitious gym building project at the school complicates tradition / habit so we had to host VBS at church this year. The guys hauled in swing sets and play houses and soccer nets to entertain the children at recess. We brainstormed to create 3 large classes out of one big open space and banished one group to the too-small nursery. Everything was labour intensive but it also worked better than expected. Still, we spent a lot of time at church organizing, facilitating, cleaning, and just being there to do whatever needed to be done and help out with any kid drama such as gravel scrapes and forgotten lunches .

Here’s how it went:

One class had an usually large amount of kids so I got to spend some time with them several days. It made me feel like a school teacher again.                                    Frisbees on the roof every day. Children on the roof, too suddenly. 

The back row of boys cutting up, singing crazy, their favourite song the duck song. Bébé B is enthralled. They like him too. 

No throwing rocks near the church windows. no throwing rocks full stop.

Say kind things. The group of preteen boys I worked with a couple days seems to have forgotten what those are. The girls conversely are full of over the top compliments they don’t actually mean.       

Beading. Macrame. Hot gluing.                       

Painting. Signs at the road, verses, something pretty for the walls.      

Flower arranging. Foraging. Everything looks like autumn. 
Crafting with the big boys. There’s so many 11 and 12 year olds this year. Their crafting skills are above par. Otherwise they act 5 but with 15 vocabularies. Little B watches in awe. As do I. 
Food. Juice boxes. Chatting with the snack ladies every day. Someone always asking to hold bébé, giving me a couple minutes to be more efficient. 

Killing time but always busy. 

Picking up “my” girl (Lexus) every day. She is such a joyful sweet child. 

So many tables and chairs and glue sticks and pencil crayons and a hundred or more pairs of scissors. 

Muffins from Paula, buns from  Val, supper from Paula and her girls, kombucha scoby from Heidy, a housewarming snake plant for my entrance from Paula. Cucumbers and another housewarming gift from Heidy . Kittens from Tiffany.  Generosity abounds. 

Pizza party to celebrate the last day. Pop pizza Caesar salad ice-cream. Food of champions. The children are all joyful and foodfull and some are a little sad that it’s all over. 

The program is great. The silent skit of the first and second graders. The only half wild Only a Boy Named David and If You’re Happy and You Know It. The hauntingly harmonized God Makes a Lot From a Little. BTT gets to do the thanking and do the closing praying. 

The after party is long and exhausting because we are in charge of making sure everyone gets fed and then we  have to stay until the end to clean up. 

Then we go home and rehabilitate our new kittens and my sister and her husband come and we go to the lake and drink ice coffee and cook over the fire and talk a lot about Airbnb and babies and sleep.