As many of you know from our newsletter our youngest rooms are starting new curriculum this Fall. While we are waiting for that to begin, we are reading the Psalms to the kids during story time. This past week we read Psalm 100

¹ Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.
² Worship the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.
³ Know that the LORD is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.  ⁴ Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.
⁵ For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.

The Psalms are a great place to start when reading scripture to children. There are many reasons, children love poetry (it sounds like songs), it has simple language, and it has a lot of word-pictures. I find the last reason most important; because children can listen and see images of the words in their heads, “sheep of his pasture”, “all the earth”. They use their imaginations when listening and this is how kids remember things, how they learn, through their imaginations.

I encourage you to read Psalms with your kids, let the words speak for themselves, don’t feel like you have to explain every detail of them. Let them think about it and imagine what might be going on. You can explain what Psalms are and for older children encourage them to write their own Psalms of thanksgiving to God. This is a great exercise in learning to give thanks to our creator.

Today concludes our wonderful, exciting, creative and crazy week of VBS. For those of you who volunteered we know you are tired and ready for a weekend of rest. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for giving the kids a wonderful week. Thank you for making it what it was, fun and meaningful. Thank you for putting your energy into every hug, every snack, every service project, every lesson taught, every song, every craft, every baby held, every bubble blown out on the playground, every game. We know it was fun, and we know it was a sacrifice of your time. Thank you.

Today we wrapped up with our Big Question “What does Jesus want me to do?” and our Big Answer “Jesus wants me to know and love him and get fired up about sharing Him with others.” Our verse was: Matthew 28:19-20 Go and make disciples of all nations… teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always.”

Take It Home!

We shared a lot of good verses this week that can be a foundation for learning more about Jesus. Even though we packed a lot of scripture into one week, please take note of these verses and help your children learn them way beyond this week of VBS.

Enjoy the rest of your Summer!