Vacation Bible School

Next week is VBS at our church. I'm doing recreation. I'm not any kind of athlete so it should be interesting. Since this is going to take up my mornings and most of my thought next week I won't have time for blogging.
I was thinking today about the difference between bible school in my day and now. When I was a kid bible school was the high light of our summer. My brother and I so looked forward to it. The games, the crafts, the snacks. We always rode the bus with my Grandpa to pick up the kids around town. Anymore, kids don't see it that way. Most parents now a days use bible schools around town more like daycares. They dump their kids off for a few hours and you can see when they show up to pick them up they dread taking them home. Also, of course, the kids aren't as well behaved. Yes, there was always a few kids from a certain family that the teachers would try to avoid having in their class. But now its entire age groups that nobody wants. I recieved a VBS memo the other day and I noticed the director had given the 3rd and 4th grade class to a new lady. I thought, "Poor woman probably has no idea what she is getting into." Its so sad how parents have negelected to raise their children with respect and morals. VBS will probably be all the church that some kids will have all year. Two years ago I taught 1st & 2nd graders. It was just me, as it was a pretty small class of 7 kids. The theme was something Asain oriented. Most of the lessons had more to do with Japanese culture than the bible. After the first day I stopped teaching out of the book. The kids weren't very interested in it and neither was I really. I would quickly go through the book lesson briefly that way if they were asked a question at some other station they might beable to answer. The rest of my class time I spent doing bible drills. None of my kids were church members. None of them had used a bible before. Before the second day started, that morning, I looked around in the closet in my room. It was full of old bible school stuff from the past. I came across a basket full of tongue depressors with a book of the bible written on each one. I had the kids draw a stick and look up the book. I showed them how to use the table of contents. I had them say over and over that Genises was the first book, Psalms was in the middle, and Revelations was at the end. The third day I brought little erasers and who ever found their book first got an eraser. Its amazing what will thrill kids that are supposidly so turned on by video games. The erasers became a hot item in our class. They also learned the divisions of the bible. The fourth day I came up with some sticks with verses on them. They learned: book, chapter, and verse. The fifth and final day my class was memorizing verses like John 3:16. Just before they left I gave them their own bibles. A blue precious moments bible for the boys and a pink one for the girls. They were all so proud of their new bibles and told me they would continue what they had learned. I hope they did.