In addition to lots of other commandment content, our Ten Commandments CD has 4 different activities that teach the Ten Commandments into memory.

1) The Ark of the Covenant in the first level of the program has a pop-up set of tablets. Hear them dramatically read as you roll over them, and see an interesting note about each appear on the front of the Ark. Behind the Ark in the stained glass there are four video presentations about four of the commandments.

2) The Ten Scramblements... in the second level of your virtual hike up Mt. Sinai you discover "Rocky the Sinai Hyrax" standing next to a set of tablet and the sign "don't touch them." When you touch the tablets, half the words fall off, and you must drag them back into their correct locations on the tablet.

3) Up the summit trail is the Cliff Climb Quiz for one or two players. The questions about the commandments include things like "In which two books of the bible can they be found?"

4) At the summit, go into the Chapel and use Moses' Tablet-Making Computer. Compose a set of commandments tailored for your family or friends at school, then print them out to discuss.

Turn your classroom into Mt Sinai...

• Pin crumbled brown paper painter's dropcloth to the wall and stuff newspaper behind it to "boulder it."
• Bring in a bushy branch and cover with red and yellow cellophane "flames". Add a small fan beneath to make a burning bush.
• Sculpt individual commandments onto sheets of green floral styrofoam. Press the letters of a commandment into the foam using an unsharpened pencil. Fill the letter grooves with either a thin coat of glitter-glue, or brush in a thin coat of fabric paint.
• Tack cardboard squares to the wall to form a "stone wall" behind your computers.
• Make a 'tunnel' entrance in your classroom doorway using tables and burlap sacks or canvas drop cloth filled with foam or newspaper.
• Build a "Chaos Canyon Bridge" in your doorway's entrance with cardboard planks and 'rocks'. Label the planks as they are labeled in the game. Game: roll die to roll across the bridge planks. When kid lands on bridge plank, they have to remember/explain what that plank is all about (it's detailed in the software).

Three Weeks Through the Roof
--a 3 week lesson outline from Neil MacQueen

Our Faith Through the Roof game CD teaches the story of the man who needed to see Jesus, and the friends who had the faith and love to get him there! 

Here's how to turn Faith Through the Roof story into a three week lesson!

Week One: Play the Faith Through the Roof CD, www.sundaysoftware.com/faith

Week Two: Show and Discuss the "Miracles of Faith" animated Nest Video http://sundayresources.net/biblevideos/newtestamentvideos.htm  Discuss how each miracle reveals the character of God, and affects those around the healed person. Discuss Jesus' miracles as signs of his identity. (The software in week 1 also emphasizes this point).

Week Three:  Play the Faith Through the Roof OLYMPICS after your Bible Study....

1. Buddy Blanket Relay....  Team members take turns dragging each other on a blanket down to Peter's house to see Jesus. Two people pull while one rides on the blanket which scoots along on the floor.  Emphasize the miracle of good friends who can help bring us to Jesus and help us lead righteous lives. Discuss strategies for how friends can help each other get to church.

2. Through the Roof Drop...  Using barbie dolls and a shoe box, teammates each get three tosses to get their buddy into Peter's house (the shoebox).  Players "snap" a blanket which snaps the barbie doll up into the air and (hopefully) towards the box. Younger children can try to 'fling' the doll in the blanket (change the rules to make it fun). Tape a picture of Jesus' face in the shoebox for a little extra fun. Discuss how friends can look out for their friends spiritual and physical well-being.

3.  Pick Up Your Mat!  ...With hands behind their backs and no hands or teeth or kicking allowed, kids run down to Peter's house and must pick up a mat (blanket or similar) off the floor and bring it back to their team. Harder than it sounds, and fun. Discuss how the man's life was changed, how his family's life was changed, and have the kids come up with a "speech" the man might have given to others about what happened to him.

Create a "Summer Bible Baseball League" and use 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. Two teams can play against each other, or one team can play against the computer.

Create a BALLPARK in your classroom.... see ideas below!

Baseball/Softball decor is easy to find in member homes and 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
 

Where is this group of kids?                 > > > Inside the belly of the whale! The church made one of those inflatable whales using fans and plastic which led to a "belly room" where they learned and played our Elijah & Jonah CD. Below is a lab with a permanent Jonah theme. Notice the fish nets and painted fish in the ceiling. Companies like Oriental Trading Co have lots of inexpensive "beach" and ocean decor.

Summertime can be "Do Over" time for your kids' favorite software. 

And what's wrong with going back to refresh their memories!

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, especially if it was one of those CDs which has a ton of extra content, or you didn't have enough time to use it earlier in the year.

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 20+ 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 MEMORY VERSES using Cal & Marty's Scripture Memory Game CD

  You could make this summer 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

Use Cal & Marty CD to teach the verses, then cap it off with the Ballpark Theme and Bible Grand Slam CD quiz questions you create about each verse! (See ballpark ideas above)

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

In Fall of Jericho CD, the kids RACE ACROSS SINAI by answering questions you have input into the game. This makes the game an excellent tool for reinforcement, and a sneaky way to GAUGE just how effective your teaching was this year. 

Because this CD's theme is a race to Jericho, decorate your room with lots of BOXES and invite the winning team to knock the walls down!

Here's are two fun twists on using a Data Projector with your computer:

You can project any computer program 6 feet high! on the wall by connecting an LCD data projector to your computer's monitor port. Many members have data projectors these days as part of their home theaters or for their business.

Idea #1:  Create a "Talking MC" who speaks to your kids in real time answering their questions or leading them in worship. Here's how:  Create a talking character in Let's Talk CD. Whatever you type your character will say outloud in a computer voice. This next step is all about "strategic placement of the screen and typist." Project the character on a projection screen, but make sure the screen is sitting in front of the wall and only as big as the character, --so that the part of the game module that show's the typed text doesn't shine on the projector screen. Now hide behind something at your computer so the kids can't see you type. You can use this character as a worship leader, teacher, preacher, or praying person. Lots of fun if you get the setup right!

Idea #2: Have one or more kids take turns in front of the wall -pretending to be part of the projection. 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.

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. (Kids create a character who speaks aloud whatever they type).  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

These Let's Talk talking heads can be played back for adults at a Mission Fair (they can't be saved, but you can keep them on the screen and replay them)

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/pentecost.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.

Students: What would a secret ROMAN report to Pilate say about Jesus in Playground PIG LATIN? 

“ilate-Pay, esus-Jay ay-says e-hay is-ay the-ay ing-Kay of-ay ings-Kay, ot-nay aeasar-Cay!”    

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:

1. It’s fun, especially if you give it a theme, such as pirate or spy-language.
2. It works multiple areas of their brain. And when you do that, their memory dramatically increases.
3. 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.