Summer Computer Lab Ideas

CREATIVE IDEAS for YOUR SPRING or SUMMER LAB...

Take an Exodus Adventure...

The Exodus story is huge and there is a lot of great media you can string together to create some powerful lessons about the Old Testament's most important story.

Many Exodus lessons don't tell the part of the story AFTER Mt. Sinai. They don't get in to Leviticus & Numbers. Game 3 in Exodus Adventures DOES! It presents an overview of that part of the story -disguised as a helicopter flying game, that sends them into their Bibles.

Videos to consider: Prince of Egypt, or TNT's "Moses" (Ben Kingsley as Moses).

Software: Exodus Adventures CD... a 3D game that takes 35-45 minutes per lesson.

Room Design Idea: pin or tape cardboard square 'blocks' on the wall and around the door to create an Egyptian Village and pyramid. (See picture at right of my lab's Exodus decor)

Have warm weather? Create a mudpit with mud and straw. They'll soon learn why the slaves complained! Use a plastic baby pool. Have plenty of garbage bags on-hand to cover clothing, and a hose or bucket and paper towels to clean the Hebrew's feet.

For more free creative lesson ideas, visit the Exodus section of the Lesson Exchange at www.rotation.org

Measure & Improve Your Kids' "Bible proficiency"
using Bongo Loves the Bible CD

Did you know we put a Bible "proficiency" test inside Bongo? It's disguised as one of the Jungle games with four levels of Bible questions (from Bible Beginner to Bible freak). Chart progress through the four levels of knowledge "about the Bible" in "Bongo Knows the Bible" jungle games. The 4 levels move through 80 different questions we researched and concluded were "essential Bible knowledge" questions that every older elementary student should know.... Who, Where, When, What Order. Look for the link on the Bongo description page to read the 80 questions.

Or, focus on the Books of the Bible "Canyon Game" in "Bongo's Books of the Bible" Game. Work on Old Testament, or New, or both. The CD teaches them the correct order through a fun game.

One church last year decorated their lab as a jungle, complete with inflatable monkeys and birds hanging from the ceiling. (See picture on this page). Monkeygoods.com has two foot inflatable monkeys for $3 and a five foot monkey for $10.

Inflatable Bananas? Yes, they make them. Google it!

The 2008 Summer Bongo Lab at Hampton United in Ontario

Here's a picture Bongo being played cooperatively on the "Starship Ecclesia's 'command bridge'" at the Lawrenceburg SDA Church in Lawrenceburg TN. They hooked two keyboards and a joystick together into one computer so that each student could control part of Bongo (aim, direction, selection of answers, point of view). Then they projected Bongo on an overhead screen ala the Starship Enterprise. If you have a newer computer with several open USB ports, you can easily hook two keyboards and two mice into separate USB ports.

5 Reasons why using Bible software during the spring and summer is a great idea:

1) Saves Money while boosting attendance! Spring and summer often have lower attendance. And that means you need fewer computers (or maybe just one) and less software. And yet it can help reward attendance.

2) Fresh Break! In spring and summer the regular teachers are less regular in their attendance and more open to new ideas. Thus, it's a good time to introduce something new such as software. If you already have computers in your program, the kids won't want to take a break.

3) Adds Excitement! Spring and summer Sunday School often needs a little more excitement as students and teacher are a bit worn out by traditional methods they've been using all year long. Of course, the kids never tire of computers, so spending extra time in the computer lab will help. Tell your students ahead of time which Sundays they are scheduled into the lab.

4) It's Review Time! Spring and Summer is a GREAT time to go back over previously taught content with previously purchased software that you didn't fully use last time you booted it up. It's a good time to bring in QUIZ software too. Refreshing student memories is an essential task and software makes it painless.

For those of you in
Rotation Model
Sunday Schools, Summer is an excellent time to let the kids stay in the lab for a couple of weeks in a row. I call this "taking the computer workshop offline." Normally in a Rotation schedule, each group only stays one week at time in the computer lab. During the summer, however, you can spend SEVERAL weeks in a row depending on what you want to accomplish. Why? Because summer has always been a time to do things differently. Doing the summer differently will also make your return to the regular fall schedule seem fresh.

FLY the Friendly Galilean Skies with Galilee Flyer CD

Galilee Flyer CD covers all the following in four fun games:

The Beatitudes, Lord's Prayer, Famous Saying from the Sermon on the Mount (You are salt, light, Seek First, Love Enemies); and Jesus' One Line Parables --the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, a pearl, leaven, a treasure.

The Kingdom of God is one of Jesus' great themes, but it doesn't seem to get a lot of attention in some curriculum. That's why we put it in Galilee Flyer. In addition to learning the four short parables about the Kingdom, the game EXPLAINS what the Kingdom of God is and means to us.

Display beach toys, inflatable rings hung from the ceiling, plastic starfish and sand buckets. Got a surfboard? Surf Galilee!

If you have a copy of Holyland 3-D CD you can take students on a FLYing tour over Israel's landscape. Holyland 3-D uses high resolution satellite maps to generate 3-D terrain of the Holyland to explore with your pilot controls.

Other G. Flyer Decor ideas... Recreate the "V" and "Q" icons found floating in the Galilee landscape and hang them from your ceiling. After the computer lesson, set up a giant gameboard on the floor with a blue cloth Sea of Galilee in the middle. Fly paper "Galilee Flyer" airplanes around the CD attempting to land on Quiz questions and score points. "Bury" the treasure, leaven, pearl and mustard seed undercover and land on them to gain bonus pts. Finish by making your airplane land on the airstrip.

Make a Sandy Beach in another room (not near your computers). In 2000 in my church we made a wood frame from 2x6x12's and stretched a canvas tarp across it, then poured in about 10 bags of play sand, and stuck beach chairs and toys in it, to make a place to show Sunday morning movies. The kids loved it, and surprisingly, the sand DID NOT create a problem outside the box. What very little came out was easily vacuumed up. See photo of our classroom beach at this website.

Create a "Summer Bible Baseball League" using Bible Grand Slam CD

Bible Grand Slam comes with hundreds of Bible trivia questions of varying difficulty (singles to homeruns) AND it also comes with a Question Editor so you can create your own questions about the lessons you taught this past year.

Create a "league" and move teams across a wall chart so that everyone wins.Baseball/Softball decor is easy to find at places like www.orientaltradingcompany.com

Study the Story of Joseph with these two great resources:

1. A copy of TNT's Joseph video. This is a terrific movie with Martin Landau as Jacob, and Sir Ben Kingsley as Potiphar.
2. A copy of Sunday Software's Joseph's Story CD
Joseph is a H-U-G-E story, second only to the Exodus story. That's why we've devoted one terrific CD to it.
See pictures from one church's creative Joseph VBS

Summertime can be "Do Over" time...

Summer is an excellent time to GO BACK and DO IT OVER. At some point every year, most teacher have the feeling that we should have spent more time (or done a better job) on a key story or two. Maybe you have a CD you just didn't feel you had a grip on until AFTER you have used it, or didn't get the attendance during that CD's use you had hoped for, or had a technical problem that is now cured. Go back and do it over.

Summertime can be "Go Back and Go Deeper" time...

Summer is an excellent time to pull out that certain CD and go deeper into its content. Many times I wish we had to to go into a CD's certain program area, but we just didn't have the time.

A good example of this is a program like the Ten Commandments CD. No way you can do all its content in one class time.

Joseph's Story CD is another good example. Some customers report "not being able to do it all" in their short class time. This summer you could easily spend several week in Joseph's palace ruins exploring everything. Because it's in a game format, the kids will love you for it.

Go Back and Go Deeper. In my 14 years of computer lab teaching experience, I've found most kids don't mind "going back" at all when "going back" takes place on the computer.

IF it has been over six months since you last printed the free Teaching Tips for the program you are going back to, I strongly recommend you go print the Tips. Most of our Tips have been updated in the last six months. Some substantially. Go to http://www.sundaysoftware.com/teachtip.htm

Study a Group of MEMORY VERSES using Cal & Marty's Scripture Memory Game CD

This could be the "Summer of Key Verses"
You could review just the "key verses" from last year's lessons. Cal & Marty make it fun.
As a bonus, have teens come in the lab in Spring or early June to create presentations to view in Kid Pix 3 on the stories younger students will be exploring during the summer.

If you're not familiar with Cal & Marty...it's a fun CD to use over and over again. Visit the Cal & Marty page at http://www.sundaysoftware.com/luther-calvin

Create a Year-in-Review Question set for Fall of Jericho

See how much info they've retained. Create a Theme for your Quiz Time

The brain moves refreshed memories into "easier access" areas of memory. Thus, "refreshing" content is an essential task for all teachers to do.

Do an EXTREME MAKE-OVER on your Lab

You may already know what software you are scheduled to teach with, but that doesn't mean you can't have some extra fun in the lab this summer.

Many of you will remember the summer I put our computers inside Camping Tents on the floor. That was a blast.

Move your computer lab to a different room. Often churches have unused rooms during the summer. If you have a smaller lab, it is easier to move. If you have smaller attendance, you probably won't have to move all the computer either.

This would also be an excellent opportunity to paint and decorate your computer workshop while the computers are elsewhere.

Borrow a data projector for a special series of projected computer lessons.

Here's a fun new twist on the projection idea:
Project the computer program on the wall about 5 feet high and have one or more kids take turns in front of the wall as the "onscreen helper" interacting with the program. For example, tell the child to "press the button on the screen" and as they do it, you the teacher move the mouse to do it on the computer. This is a very fun way to "be in" the program. Your kids will like standing next to Moses or Bildad. You'll like asking them to provide content.

You can take this another playful direction using an overhead projector instead of the computer and a "menu screen" on a transparency.

My software suggestions for your Vacation Bible School curriculum can be found at www.sundaysoftware.com/vbs.htm

Summer Mission Themes...

If you have the internet, you can visit mission sites you support, and use Google Earth to locate missions via satellite maps.

Perhaps you�re teaching them the Great Commission, for example. That can be broken into two or three verses and the KIDS themselves can edit the verses into Cal & Marty, then practice unscrambling them. www.sundaysoftware.com/luther-calvin

Another possibility is using the new �Let�s Talk� CD. Create an onscreen character who talks to the kids about mission, then quizzes them, then asks them some discussion questions for them to respond to. Either you or the students themselves could create the Let�s Talk presentations based on a verse or based on the Mission for the day using the Lesson Builder module. www.sundaysoftware.com/lets-talk

Creating Detective-007-Secret Code learning activities... a cool idea

What do the following code phrases mean? (answers below)

�Fishman is the Big Cheese.�
�Beat it and shoosh on the ooops.�

�Kay from Georgia� asked me to help her come up with computer lab activities that fit into her �007-CSI� summer lessons themes (love the theme!). And that�s where I came up with using the TALKBACK capabilities of Let�s Talk CD or Kid Pix to have the kids �create secret agent code� that talks-back their �lesson code� for all to hear. (I�ve sketched out similar ideas for Pentecost at www.sundaysoftware.com/pentecos.htm For example�What would the good news about Jesus sound like in �pirate language�? Fun stuff.) VBS materials have used this "detective" theme, but you can use it any time.

So now.. what would Peter�s speech at Pentecost sound like in SPY language? Peter (aka �The Big P�) could talk in PIG LATIN: �esusJay isay ordLay.� In my Pentecost lesson page, I have some extended remarks on what Peter (your students) can do.

Or what would a secret ROMAN report to Pilate say about Jesus in Playground PIG LATIN? �ilatePay, esusJay aysays ehay isay hetay ingKay ofay ingsKay, otnay aeasarCay.� The speech playback in Let�s Talk makes this sound humorous.

Playground Pig Latin Primer: Deciding how to �Latinize� words is not an exact science, but generally speaking, you move the first letter of a word to the end of the word and add the sound �ay� to the word. With short words you often just add the sound �ay� to it. Thus, �of� becomes �of-ay�.

Lesson work-out: Have your different workstations create the report in English, then translate it on paper using Pig Latin, then show it to the teacher before typing into Let�s Talk�s �Talk Now� module. Then switch computers and have kids �decode� each others� reports. You could also have the kids use a wordprocessor to type and print their secret code documents, then exchange them with each other for �decoding� �though the �talkback� features and character selection options in Let�s Talk are a lot more fun to work with.

If you use Crosswords and Wordsearch CDs, either the teacher or the students can create the puzzles, and either play them on the screen, or print them out. www.sundaysoftware.com/wordgame.htm

NOTE: I�m often asked �what do we do after the Life of Christ CD�s short presentation?� �or for that matter, ANY CD�s short presentation on the story of the day. What do you do if the program you�re using does not have additional activities? The answer has always been �use OTHER programs to create follow-up activities.� Three of our most popular programs to do this with are Let�s Talk CD, Kid Pix CD, and Crossword & Wordsearch CDs. I�ve sketched out many such �follow-up activities� in our newsletters and teaching tips.

I love having kids manipulate the language of the stories for several reasons:

It�s fun, especially if you give it a theme, such as pirate or spy-language.
It works multiple areas of their brain. And when you do that, their memory dramatically increases.
Because it is challenging, they ask more questions, and that means that as a teacher you get to dive into more of the MEANING of the concepts. And if you ask them to improve the work their doing in the new language, they don�t groan at you.

Even non-readers and early readers can manipulate language, keyboards and codeword activities. They just need more help doing it. And with a program like Let�s Talk or Kid Pix, they get their RESULTS read back to them! And that�s a nice pay-off.

Photo of the computer station "Shark Cage" at the Presbyterian Church
of Lawrenceville NJ's 2007 "Great Bible Reef" VBS

Don't have Summer Sunday School?

Put one of your computers on a rolling cart and wheel it into your Fellowship Hall after worship for coffee and juice time. The kids will love you for it, and it will give adults a reason to stick around a little longer.

Create a "Lending Bag" of software you are willing to lend to your students over the summer. Keep good records of who has what, and encourage parents to go through the programs with their child. Give them a simple handout of questions for each program that when filled-out demonstrates to you that they did the program. Award fun prizes.

You could expand on this concept to include previously viewed videotapes.

Summer is the ideal time to ASSESS YOUR HARDWARE'S FUTURE

Even if you have much older computers, you may NOT need to replace them this year.

How is that possible?
Because it depends on the stories you want to teach in in the coming year. If most of those stories can be taught using OLDER software, you can probably squeak another year out of your older computers. But... if all the stories for the coming year seem to require newer software that's beyond your current equipment, then this summer-the-year-before is the time to realize it and start either backpedaling, or thinking about replacing your equipment. *Most church budgets are assembled in the Fall.*

If you need help determining whether or not your equipment will be viable in the year or two ahead, email me at neil@sundaysoftware.com.

This article may be reprinted for local non-commercial use only.
Copyright 2004-09 Neil MacQueen