Saturday, August 17, 2024

Garden Daily Vacation Bible School/GDVBS

GDVBS
Garden Daily Vacation Bible School/DVBS - Garden themed Daily Vacation Bible School

(This is a first, and rough, draft of a proposal.)


There is a need for children's activities, summer camps, and possibly daycare, within Port Alberni.  Currently this appears to be addressed solely by the purchase of prepared materials (mostly from American publishers).  This means that multiple churches are producing the same, single week, program, and there is no variation or longer term activity available for children and families.


Proposal:
A summer camp, probably involving multiple churches.
This could involve a longer period of time than just one week.
(This gives parents more consistency in terms of day care, but also provides a longer term for "campers" to see plants/garden developing.)
Possibly this might be a morning only camp, taking advantage of cooler morning temperatures. 

Options:
Mornings only for the entire summer
Mornings only every second week for the entire summer. 
Multiple churches taking on snacks and supplies over the longer period. 
Allowing for the kids to see the effects of gardening as various plants grow over the period.
Different lessons from the garden. The various sermons from the garden. Sermons and devotionals for the summer camp, DVBS staff as well from the sermons and devotionals. 


Lesson ideas:
Kids like to plant corn.  Object lesson: corn will grow in isolation, but it doesn't produce anything.  It needs to be planted in blocks in order to produce corn.  We need to be in fellowship to be productive Christians.

Kids love gardens more when they have been involved in creating them.  God loves us because He created us.

Intercropping - different members of one body


Wheat and tares
Transplanting
Plastic


Possible involvement with Shelter Farm, AVFSS, local farms and markets, CMHA garden


Currently:
Most activities are short-term and sports oriented.  The daily vacation Bible schools that are provided by the churches tend to be canned programs developed out of the United States.  Those churches that do run Daily Vacation Bible Schools, use the same programs, so that children, even if they go to multiple Daily Vacation, Bible School programs during the summer, are seeing the same programs, repeated.

Using the garden and garden camp as a theme provides a longer stretch, providing longer and broader camping experience for the children attending, and providing more daycare, and extended time for parents seeking summer activities for their children.

This would be a large task for any single church to support individually.  It would be best if as many churches as possible can be involved, in order to reduce the demand and drain on resources for any single church.

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