WOW4 Holiday Club Part 1

The St. John's Holiday Club, WOW4, started on Monday 29th July 2013.

Over 30 children joined the WOW4 team on what turned out to be a lovely day in spite of an extremely dubious weather forecast.

The theme for the week was colour and light and on the first day we discussed light in general, colour and what it would be like if we were unable to see.  We also focussed on the fact that Jesus had said, "I am the light of the world" and reflected on what this mine mean for us.

Activities that we embarked upon included looking at stained glass windows after which the children made "stained glass window biscuits"!

We also noticed haw a rainbow effect could be produced when we shone a light on to glass crystals or CDs.

We made some bouncy, multi-coloured egg-bugs ....

..... made rainbow pictures ....

..... and ran "rainbow streamer relay races"!

We also tried to get a sense of what difficulties we might face if we couldn't see.  To do this we tried to write our names and draw a picture whilst blind folded!

In addition we did a "Blind show relay".  For this the children took off one shoe and everyone put their shoes in a box at one end of the link corridor.  Then, wearing blindfolds, children in two teams made their way down to the box, found their own shoe and returned to the next team member!

At the end of the first day we listened to a story of Jesus healing a blind man.  [From John1 v 9-41].  We also considered how difficult it must be for children who can't see and decided to run a "Bucket collection" of small change for St. Vincent's school which teaches blind and partially sighted children and draws children from across Merseyside.  This collection will be continued in church throughout August.  So, please collect up all your small change and put it in the buckets that will be at the back of church.

 [At our Harvest Festival Tom (who goes to the school) and his mother, Tina, (Maude's niece) will be coming to church to collect the money for the school.]

[For more information about St. Vincents go to http://www.stvin.com/]

On the second day of the club (Tuesday 30th July) we focused on the colour green.  We considered the symbolism of this colour both as it appeared in the `bible and as we think about it in our country today.  We decided that it symbolised "life".

The children searched for different shades of green in the church grounds and also in the church itself.   They found many different shades and surprised themselves by finding more in the church than in the grounds!

Having done this they played a bizarre game which involved transferring dried peas from one place to another using only a green straw!  (You had to be there!!!)

In addition they planted cress seeds, some under a dark cover and some under transparent covers.  The aim is to try to find out whether the ensuing seedlings are any different from each other!  

This is what happened to mine!

The children also made (and cut out) green hand prints .....

..... as well as paper plate frog puppets!






On Tuesday we ended with the story of Palm Sunday!  (It's not too hard to find the green link in that!)

In addition to all this we have been learning an action song to sing at our special service on Sunday.  [To find out what it is you'll have to wait until Sunday!]

At the time of writing I am looking forward to Wednesday!