SonWorld Adventure Park VBS Day 5 Teaching Tips

School is out and summer is here and that means it’s time for Vacation Bible School!

Here are some great lesson tips to super charge your Gospel Light SonWorld Adventure Park VBS! These ideas are for middler and preteen students and are intended to supplement the lesson plans in the Gospel Light Bible Story Center Guides.

Living in small town rural America, our Congregational Church joined with our neighbors at the United Methodist Church. We had 60 kids evenly divided into three groups—Pre-K to K, 1-3rd grade, and 4-6th grade—and shuffled them between 7 stations.

Day 5 Lesson
The Disciple

Day 5 Scripture
John 20:1-31

Day 5 Teaching Tip
Since our 5 day VBS was only 4 days, Tuesday-Friday, we had two lessons on Friday. We decided to do the last lesson with all the kids together during the closing assembly.

How do you effectively teach a room full of kids of all ages? Reader’s Theatre, with a twist!

Here’s the twist.

Preparation
Glue regular sized paper onto cardboard, making five “cards.” One each card, use a thick magic marker to draw one of the following faces:

• Happy face
  
• Relaxing face
• Angry face
• Crying face
• Surprised face

Copy John 20 onto your word processor. Read through the story and mark the emotional points of the story, using one of the faces. The SonWorld lesson begins at 20:19, I suggest you start at verse 1 to set the stage for Thomas’ story. When you reach key emotional points in the story, hold up one of the faces and have the kids express that emotion.

Recruit someone who will hold up the faces at the appropriate time and someone to read the story.

Lesson Time
Right as you're about to teach the Bible lesson, hold up each card before the kids and have them sound off that card’s emotion. By practice, the kids will associate a sound with a card's face.

• Happy face = "Yeah!" (Use this when Jesus is seen alive)
  
• Relaxing face = "Aaaahhh!" (Use this when Jesus tells his disciples, "Peace be with you.")
• Angry face = "Urrrgghhh!" (Use this when Thomas says he won't believe until he sees for himself the risen Lord)
• Crying Face = "Booo Hoooo!" (Use this when Mary is sad)
  
• Surprise Face = "Oooohhhh!" (Use this when the tomb is found empty, when Jesus appears)
  

Now read the story of John 20.

With Readers Theatre, the students experience firsthand the emotions of the characters who encountered the risen Lord.

This teaching technique is lots of fun and works great with a group.