We just wrapped our latest installment of Kid Studios Live: Family Experience at Southhills. Our latest series was titled “CAMP”. The main reason for the theme was because it is sumer time and everyone always goes to camp, however this year we chose not to go to the mountains for camp. We wanted to tie it into the once a quarter family service we do and create a fun family experience to remember.
The main verse for the series was Matthew 7:7-8

Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

The big question I asked was why do we always have such an amazing experience when we go away to camp? Why do we make new friends? Have a closer relationship with god? Get clarity on life?
The reason is simply this, you find it because you are seeking it!
It was a three week series and each week was as follows:
1. Seek God
2. Seek Family
3. Seek Community
We challenged the parents and kids to begin actively seeking these things out in their home, because whatever you seek you will surely find.
     It was a super fun series to design. Our goal was to make the church feel like it was an old fashioned church camp in the mountains. Everything had a rustic feel to it from the art to the actual set pieces. Our friends in the Royal Rangers even let us use their archery equipment and BB guns for pre-service activities.
     We created a music playlist that was just for the series and helped create the environment for before and after service (thanks Kids On The Move for the inspiration). We also had a track of ambient outdoor music playing with crickets and other sounds to make it feel like we were outside during the entire service.
     My favorite part of each service was that we ended with “campfire time” which was a more intimate acoustic worship set led by our fantastic worship team at Southhills Church. We put up a video of a big campfire on our projector screens and even heard the crackles of the fire as we sang some favorite camp classics together.
This series was really fun to create because we had so many different elements to make it feel like CAMP.
————
     If you have any question about the series, how we created it, or want to use elements of it, just ask and I would love to share what our team has created.

We did a Series for our Kid Studios Live: Family Experience recently called “It’s A Trap!” and it was loads of fun! One of the best parts was the set for it. We modeled the stage design after the game Mouse Trap. For the object lessons we built various types of traps to illustrate the main points. 

Here is how we made the rat trap, one of the object lessons. We looked online and found that the guys at Kids On The Move had already built a stage prop similar and we studied video and pictures of theirs to make our process easier.

Check out their sight for tons of ministry resources seeds.churchonthemove.com

Source: vimeo.com

We did a Series for our Kid Studios Live: Family Experience recently called “It’s A Trap!” and it was loads of fun! One of the best parts was the set for it. We modeled the stage design after the game Mouse Trap. For the object lessons we built various types of traps to illustrate the main points. 

Here is how we built the bear trap, one of our main stage props.

Source: vimeo.com

We did a Series for our Kid Studios Live: Family Experience recently called “It’s A Trap!” and it was loads of fun! One of the best parts was the set for it. We modeled the stage design after the game Mouse Trap. For the object lessons we built various types of traps to illustrate the main points. Here are some pictures of the stage design.

Games 06/29/11

- Kids Games… you will actually play -

Here is the line up for pump up (Every kid gets to play) games this week…

Freeze Dance

While you have exciting game music playing, have all the kids in the room dance. When you pause or stop the song they have to freeze. Whoever keeps dancing after the music stops is out. The last kid or kids still in at the end of the song win. We usually end up just playing for fun for a few minutes with nobody being “out”.

Guess Who?

We put together a power point slide show with pictures of different team members of our church and also of some famous people the kids would recognize. We applied a transition effect on the slide show so that it would “Dissolve” in and set it to take 30 seconds until the picture was fully revealed. We put a black bumper slide in between each picture to create buffer space. I encouraged the kids to shout out who they thought was in the picture as it slowly appeared until finally they could all see it. We had lots of fun with this game. There were a few issues with compatibility between the power point version on the computer that created the show and the computer used to display it to the kids. Just be sure you test it a few days before you want to use it.

Speed Pass

We have four sections of chairs setup in our sanctuary. We had an adult leader posted at the corner of each section of chairs holding a bouncy ball. The challenge was for the kids in the section to pass the ball to each other as fast as they can until it reaches the end of the section of chairs, then pass it back to the first kid. The section that does this the fastest wins. The only real rule was that the ball had to touch the hands of EVERY kid in the section of chairs.

Line up for our Big Challenge (Selected kids get to play) games…

Kangaroo Pouch

We chose one boy and one girl to compete in this game. We scattered a bunch of ball pit balls on the play area and the contestants had to collect them in their trash bag while hopping inside the bag itself. It was a mix between an Easter egg hunt and a potato sack race. The contestant that collects the most ball pit balls at the end of 60 seconds is the winner. Make sure you setup a boundary around the play area because the kids watching will get very excited and want o rush into the field to join in the game. 

Props: 2 Trash bags, two bags of ball pit balls (or any object to collect)
Contestants: 2
Play Area: Large

Over Under

This is a classic game we have played for years at our church. Get a row of 8 boys lined up single file, do the same with the girls. Then give the first boy and the first girl a ball. The challenge is that the first child has to pass it to the person behind them OVER their head, the next child passes it behind them UNDER their legs, OVER, UNDER, OVER, UNDER. this happens until the ball reaches the last child and returns again to the front of the line. the first team do to this wins.

Props: 2 Bouncy Balls
Contestants: 16
Play Area: Medium

The Scoop

This game was boys verses girls. We setup the play area with four bowls (two for the boys and two for the girls). Working as a team the boys and girls had to transfer the ball pit balls from one bowl to the other as fast as they could using only spoons. The team that transferred the most ball pit balls to their other bowl was the winner. This game was lots of fun especially when the kids would drop the ball off the spoon and had to chase it down.

Props: 4 bowls, 20 ball pit balls, 4 spoons
Contestants: 4
Play Area: Medium

Lessons Learned this week:

Always, ALWAYS, test out your games in the actual play area and with the ACTUAL equipment you will be using with the game BEFORE the day of if possible.

Games 06/22/11

- Kids Games… you will actually play -

Here is the line up for pump up (Every kid gets to play) games this week…

Yeehaw

I challenge the kids to say “yeehaw” louder then i can say it. I start by whispering yeehaw and when we are done with the game all of us are shouting it! A great way to get them warmed up.

Shapes

We get the kids into groups of 10 to 15 then call out random shapes for the group to look like. The rules are that each member of the group must be used and the first group to look like the shape called out wins the round. Play as many rounds as you like. Some of the shapes we tell the children to work together to look like are circle, triangle, smiley face, star, etc. have fun with it!

The Switch

The switch is a variation on the game “do you like your neighbor?” The host calls out things about the kids and if a kid has the piece of clothing, hair color, or shoe, they must quickly switch seats with someone else in the room. Last night i called out “if you have any teeth missing switch” and all the kids with missing teeth switched seats very quickly.

Line up for our Big Challenge (Selected kids get to play) games…

Giant Cup Stack ATTACK (video here)

This week we were talking about how God’s word is like a shield. To help illustrate the need of shields in our lives we tweaked the classic speed stack game. We had two kids on stage playing jumbo speed stack while the kids in the crowd got to throw crumpled up wads of paper at them and their stacks. The first kid to fully stack the cups was the winner. When you let kids throw things at each other it usually will get a little out of hand so be warned! It was a fun game to help illustrate the message, but probably wont go into a rotation to play again soon.

Props: Giant cup stack game (we use them all the time for different games)
Contestants: 2
Play Area: Small

Elefun (video here)

I’ve been trying to figure out a good way to play this game for weeks! It’s a bigger version of the kids game you play in your living room. We took the bounce house fan for our bouncer and attached a drawstring trash bag to the end of the fan. We filled the fan with small balloons, tightened the draw strings, and pointed the thing towards the ceiling. The challenge was to see which kid could get the most balloons that fell from the sky, it was anticlimactic to say the least. The balloons just kind of blasted everywhere in the room but didn’t shoot very high into the air. The fun of the game is to catch the falling balloons, not to pick them up from the ground. If we end up playing this game again i would simply fashion a shaft out of cardboard boxes to put around the bouncer fan, ideally it would be about 10 feet high. This would give us the airtime we were looking for with the balloons.

Props: Large bouncer fan with cardboard sleeve around blower, small balloons, nets
Contestants: 4
Play Area: Large

Go! Speed Racer GO!

We chose 2 boys and 2 girls to race around all the seats in the auditorium on these little radio flyer scooters we had in storage. It was a very simple game, the first team, boys or girls, that completed the race track the fastest won. You can never go wrong with a fun racing game like this.

Props: 4 “Scoot N’ Zoom” radio flyer carts
Contestants: 4
Play Area: Large

Lessons Learned this week:

Whenever you try out new games there is always a chance that they wont work quite right. Its important to have a few field tests before actually trying them with the kids but even then you wont know how the game will work until you include the kids. I tested Elefun 4 times before we included the kids and it flopped really bad. I thought I had fixed the issues, but you will never know until you include the kids. Kids are the ULTIMATE variable you cant control.

Top