Spring 2006 Well, we have come to the end of our Kid Zone season and will be quickly moving into our summer time. We take the summer off from Kid Zone and kids and workers worship with their families. Our plan is to get the next year's curriculum mostly planned, written and any sets, videos or props made. We've never been able to get ahead, but since we will be keeping our four themes from this season, we don't have a lot of sets to build and we have learned how to write for characters that appear regularly. We are planning to make Kid Zone a bit more interactive.
Fall 2005 After years of trying to adapt other people's material to meet the needs of my children's church, I began to write my own material. Early on I simply compiled skits, games, dramas and lessons from other's books. But I soon found I could write out my own program easier and quicker and often times much more effective. So, with a couple years of writing under my belt I, with my brother as my partner, jumped into our next big plan.
This year we would have four different themes rather than just one. Each week of the month would look, sound and teach different than the other three but they are all centered around the same virtue. With two services, that also meant we'd be staffing two full teams each week. That's four themes, for four weeks with a grand total of eight teams. That's a lot of numbers already. The sets are big and must be changed weekly, the skits are much longer because almost all the teaching is done by our characters and more videos are having to be made because we're using stories that we haven't used in the past and guess what? We don't have any video resources for them.
Yes, people think I'm totally nuts, but why not do something so big, so out there that it's success would totally be a God-thing? And besides that, my teams are so excited! The first two teams to do their skits have really enjoyed themselves. Yes! They had fun! The kids had fun! And, I think they learned something. Let me tell you a little about each theme, and then how we are doing them.
Our first theme is our Space ship. Our crew staffs the space ship Illumionous. Their motto is "Taking the Light into the Darkness." The crew is made up of a live character for the Captain. Puppet crew are the pilot and the number 2 officer. A live person finishes out the crew as the navigator and transporter operator. Each episode will find the crew dealing with a problem or alien encounter that will require them to make wise decisions. In order to make the wisest decisions, the consult their ship's computer's Life Manual Database (the Bible) for similar events in history they can learn from. They then transport that person on board in order to learn more from them first hand.
Our second theme is our diner. We have two waitresses (one live and one puppet) and the Chef who staff the Greasy Spoon Diner. They share Bible truths as they interact with each other and the customers who visit their restaurant. Fun commercials and videos bring the diner to life.
Our third theme is our Western. We join the citizens of the to Old West town of Dry Gulch. Puppet characters fun the store, the hotel and serve as the mayor of our town. A live Sheriff characters helps keep order as visitors and the occasional bad guy bring troubles to our peaceful little town. This theme allows us to retell Bible stories in a different setting.
Our final theme is our clubhouse theme. The kids of our backyard clubhouse make up the Backyard Detectives who solve neighborhood mysteries utilizing their crazy inventions, super secret code-names and eventually the Godly wisdom of Mom. Every character in this theme is a puppet except for the actress who plays mom. We intend to have a lot of fun with crazy props, and fun effects with this theme.
The great part is each week is a fresh way of telling a story based on this month's virtue. Our creative juices having really started flowing as we write for so many fun characters. We're still very early in the writing, but I will try to post some samples soon. We've done two Sunday's to date, and they've been so much fun!
Here's a look at our Wild West Christmas Program (all files require Adobe Reader).
Check out what our curriculum has been like in the past few years.
