Hero Hospital VBS
“Home to God's Outrageous Love”
From Matthew 21:14-16
It's up to leaders how they want to share the overall theme of Hero Hospital. You can start and end each VBS day with it, use it in worship, talk about it during activities, or any other time you can think of, but whatever you do you must take seriously God's life-changing love through Jesus:
God's gift of love and grace flows freely. Wherever you go, whatever you do, however you feel, God's love will always find you. For many, these ideas are outrageous. When Jesus helped and healed freely, it was thought to be outrageous. When he shared forgiveness and God's grace freely, it was thought to be outrageous. A lot of people still think it's outrageous! A love that the world sees as outrageous, is just the right kind of love in God's Kingdom. Jesus presented us with a vision of God's kingdom--so let's get outrageous and actually start building it.
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God's love changes communities into places of praise, discovery, healing, and hope for all, and makes us into heroes. You are challenged to make your church into Jesus' Vision of God's Kingdom. Go out and do it!!!
Science
Let's discover how this wonderful world and all its amazing people work.
First, let's talk about learning for kids:
The goal of all of these science activities is for the participants to explore and experiment. There are no prepared kits for kids to put together. Instead the kids will get their brains firing on all cylinders--releasing positive hormones and building robust neural networks--as they play and learn. Whatever lessons you teach kids about Jesus while they are playing like this literally get built into their brains.
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The key is play!
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What the best brain science tells us is that your goal should be to create an environment that has adult scaffolding to free up space for exploration and learning through play, so that kids develop neural mechanisms in their prefrontal cortex for proactive control like problem solving, planning, regulating and identifying emotions (learn more).
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Adult scaffolding is NOT giving a child a kit to put together, it IS giving them resources and examples and challenging them to complete a goal.
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Adult scaffolding is NOT completing a step for a child, it IS engaging a child's curiosity to problem solve through the step.
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Adult scaffolding is NOT insisting that a child solves a problem or makes something exactly like you would, it IS giving the child support and freedom to make mistakes and make breakthroughs.
When you give kids the opportunity for this kind of exploration and learning, their brains literally get bigger. Their brains and bodies get flooded with endorphins and serotonin. Endorphins make you feel more positive, improve immune response, and reduce stress. Serotonin boosts neurotransmission to improve memory and learning and even counteracts depression while improving sleep. We cannot imagine that Jesus would be anything but thrilled with an activity that did all of this for a kid.
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But wait, there's more. Discoveries in neuroplasticity have shown that adults can actually grow new neural pathways too. You're never too old to grow new brain cells, and all you have to do is play!
The Power of Prosthetics
Introduction
Remember that your goal as a leader is to provide a scaffolding to support exploration and learning through free, yet guided, play that supercharges kids' brains as they're filled up with ideas and excitement for building God's kingdom.
If you are virtual:
Share your screen and take the kids to this amazing video about an engineer in Columbia using Lego for prosthetics.
If you are in person:
Show the kids this video about an engineer in Columbia using Lego for prosthetics.
Question to Explore
Does experiencing an illness or disability define all of who you are?
Answer: No!
Why?...
Engineer a Prosthesis
Prostheses, like wheelchairs and canes, are tools used by people experiencing a disability to live out their lives. The lives they live out are no different from any other person in terms of their relationship with God, the love they have for friends and family, the jobs they work hard at, or the talents they share with the world. Some people have tools like two feet while others have one foot and one prosthesis. Dario from the video is a super cool kid who uses one hand and one prosthesis to share his gifts with the world.
Activity Objectives: Today the kids are engineers. In this activity the kids will use Lego (or household items) to make their own models of prosthetics. In this activity you will encourage the kids to experiment with different shapes and arrangements while trying to mimic human movement put also to exceed it. You can also create some sample protheses yourself.
Demonstration Video: Here's a quick video that shows the science experiment being completed. Use this video for your own information or share it with your participants. (You can enlarge the video within the video player.)
Before you get started with the activity have everyone get out their Builder Book. Tell them what they will be doing for science today and give them time to write down in their Builder Book a hypothesis for what will happen when they put their imagination and skills to the task.
If you are virtual:
Make sure the kids have had time to gather some supplies.
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Sharescreen this photo gallery:
If you are in person:
Make sure you have gathered together enough supplies for all the kids.
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Show this photo gallery: