This year we added a Visual Faith Station at Vacation Bible School. So far it has been a big hit and a great experience for our kids.
Our theme is Cave Quest by Group Publishing. We do a 3 day VBS with six stations. Each group of kids visits a different set of 2 stations a day. Rotating through them all by the end. We introduce the fun loving characters and their bible stories one at a time at each station. It's different but it works.
We needed to come up with another station and one of the team members said to me, "How about doing some of the art bible stuff you like to do?" I was super excited! Of course I would!
I decided right away I wanted to some sort of coloring with prayer. Like a combination of the faith based coloring books and Sybil MacBeth's Praying in Color concept. We would color and pray and the same time.
I wasn't sure at first how to do this with kids or tie it into our cave them.
We had also decided to make a journal, booklet like, for their take home project. At the end of each night they would color a page of the characters and their bible verses that they learned about that day. The last night, we'd put them all together into a Visual Faith booklet. I figured their praying and coloring sheet could go in, too.
After much prayer and thought, I had the inspiration of doing a coloring page that looked like a cave with symbols on it. Just like the famous cave painting pictures you see. I drew an outline of a cave and then picked a symbol for each character their bible verse.
At the Visual Faith Station, I talked about cave paintings/drawings and about how symbols were used then showed examples. Then I told them we were going to do something called praying and coloring. I explained that some people like to pray while they are coloring or drawing pictures.
I had them color one symbol at a time. While they were coloring, I read the bible verse for that symbol and then said a prayer.
The kids really seemed to enjoy it. They listened, they loved coloring and I even heard a few say "Amen" with me at the end of each prayer.
After the praying and coloring, we made our journal covers with a spray painted relief hand. Just like the famous cave hand prints, which are thought to be a persons mark or signature. The kids definitely enjoyed that part. Now, they have a nice Visual Faith Journal to remember VBS by.
