Boomwhacker Life Lessons

In a host family first for me, Bonnie and I had our own apartment as guests of a member of the congregation who lives in a senior living facility. Quiet neighbors, breakfast buffet, free wi-fi, ice cream machine downstairs.... how old exactly do you have to be to move to a place like this? Asking for a friend...

Someone was an artist- we came to a decorated church, including a waterfall in the sanctuary!

Davenport Faith is a church that clearly wants to reach out to the families around them. They had knocked on doors to invite kids to Bible school. While they didn't get quite the turnout they were hoping for, we did average twelve kids a night- and not always the same kids, so we reached more than that. Plans were in the works for their Back to School night reaching out event with crafts and activities in the church yard. The energy and willingness to help in this congregation was amazing- which helped things go smoothly when our twelve kids had about twenty-four kids' worth of energy :) We decided to rotate between three activity stations instead of the two we had planned on- and it went swimmingly.

Bonnie and I were in charge of the science station. I'm coming to enjoy the science portion of VBS. We did three lessons from the curriculum and then we made one up involving boomwhackers and sound waves. I wish I had taken pictures I could show you, but that's hard to do while conducting. Essentially, they're different-sized, different-pitched, colored plastic tubes. We lined them up lowest to highest pitch, observed that the sizes correspond to the pitches, and then played songs. Because we had eight boomwhackers and four kids in a group, the adult helpers got to join us in music-making. You are never too old for boomwhackers! The helpers really gave good tips to the kiddos- "You've got to watch her for when she points at you! Don't take your eyes off her!" I was delighted, because A) when they watched, they knew when to play, B) I got to see even young children build attention span through the allure of making music and C) their faces lit up when it was their turn- kids and adults alike. We messed up on occasion, but we had all kinds of fun. I can't help but think of this in terms of our life of faith. We should always be reminding each other to keep our eyes on God, who is delighted to make music with us. We get distracted and we may miss a note- even when we're adults- but God still loves to see our faces light up when we're right there with Him paying attention. And then the song sounds right.

Fun kid moments:
Disclaimer: I could never be a kindergarten teacher. It takes a very special person to do that all day, and I am not it. However, I do really love the littles during VBS. At one point in the script, Romper the purple river otter talked about a time when he didn't have any friends. One of the littles objected quietly and sincerely: "But I'm his friend!" "Me too!" another chimed in.

On the last night, one of them asked very solemnly in the middle of closing time on the last day- "Are we graduating?"