Drop & Shop

After and early morning start with a beautiful hike under the eclipse I headed to church to prepare for Drop and Shop. Drop and Shop is a day of activities for kids at church so parents can get their Christmas Shopping done.

The students arrived at 9:00am and we started out the day with decorating some Christmas cookies. Volunteers of the congregation had made sugar cookies, enough so each student could decorate a half dozen. It was fun to see the young creativity as colored frosting, was topped with sprinkles and for a brief moment each cookie maker admired his or her creation before devouring it. Needless to say each cookie creation was short lived as the tasty temptation was just too much for the group of five to ten year olds.

Cookie creations

Each one special

Very meticulous 

I think they like sprinkles, what do you think?

After we baked cookies we then moved into Bible Story. We all gathered in the Children’s Church classroom. Lisa, one of our youth volunteers read a BIG BOOK story of the first Christmas and I then led the students through the journey to Bethlehem.

Got to love BIG BOOKS

Channeling one of my more experienced professors back at college, Dr. Jeff Burkart, I resorted to the “old time” felt board to tell the story. As we read through the Christmas story from Luke and with each new character one of the kids got to add another felt person to the manger scene.

Felt board, we had manger characters floating in the sky and all around.

With the conclusion of the Bible Story portion we joined in singing songs. The majority of the Drop and Shop participants are also members of the church here so we rehearsed some of the familiar Christmas Songs that we are going to sing next Sunday at the Children’s Christmas Service.

The joyful songs continued into lunch. Each student had packed a sack lunch from home, this saves on cost, avoids the “picky eater” dilemmas, and risk of allergies. We sang through the 12 days of Christmas as I was corrected by a five year old that it’s not “9 Lord’s or Leaping” but “9 Ladies Dancing”. Seriously, when you are singing on the spot it’s hard to remember all the days and who goes where. Try it sometime :)

With lunch time finished, we geared up to head outside to go sledding and paint the snow. Trying to get thirteen 5-10 year olds in hats, boots, mittens, snow pants, and coats is quite a process. Once dressed the creativity amidst the winter wonder land of the church backyard began.

Paint the snow

Colorful creations

Everyone started out interested in painting the snow. My volunteers had mixed up some colored water in spray bottles so the kids went all out in painting faces, rainbows, cars and silly pictures throughout the church parking lot and snow banks. After a while the opted for sledding. The church has some nice hills in back. The started on the smaller slope, before some of the older kids ventured to the more steep, tall, and fast “Big Kahuna” as they called it. An hour and a half later and they were all tuckered out.

The small slope they started on

The "Big Kahuna" steep, tall and fast...so they tell me

Inside there was hot chocolate and the veggie tales “The Toy that Saved Christmas” waiting. The movie was a good time of “rest” for the kids to get back some energy after playing hard in the snow and tied in the theme of Christmas.

After Veggie tales we moved into craft time. Each student got to make a photo ball ornament. Earlier in the day I had taken the picture of each participant. I then printed the pictures in a 3” X 3” size and had my volunteers roll them around a pencil and place them in the clear plastic ornaments. The hard part was to get them straight, which is why I had volunteers do this. The children then decorated the outside of the ornament with puff paint and permanent markers.

Photo ornaments!

Stephanie, helping her brother add puff paint to the photo ornament-such a good helper

There were two other ornament crafts that were kits from oriental trading. One was a ginger bread man, the other “The Colors of Christmas” tree ornament. A word about oriental trading…while it may seem like a good idea to have self-adhesive backings on each foam component, for little fingers it is difficult to peel off the sticky paper, so in this case glue worked better. Nice try Oriental Trading but in the real world it does not work so well.

With the craft masterpieces drying, we moved onto our service project. We created Birthday Bags that are handed out at the church food pantry. In each birthday bag are all the items one would need to host a party; candles, cake mix, cake pan, frosting, streamers, plates, silverware, napkins, paper towels and a bag for clean up, a present for the birthday girl/boy, and a card.

counting cups, plates, and napkins, with Stephanie in the background carrying a full load of cake mix.

Ryder, hard at work carrying the frosting

The students went to work as I assigned them each a task, starting with folding the birthday cards and putting stickers on the outside of the envelopes. Then we moved into the items as each child was in charge of putting his or her "station item" in the bag. When they were all done the students split into pairs and had to go through each birthday bag to make sure there was one of every item (as stated on the checklist) and to make the bag look "presentable" rather than just thrown together. When it was all done we put them in the food pantry room ready for children to receive.

Jacob (orange) putting streamers in each bag

The ladies going over the checklist, and organizing the bags to look "presentable" for the birthday boy/girl

It was really cool for me as a leader and the children to participate in a service project. I think far too often as grown-ups we overlook the potential for little ones to serve others because we write them off as to small, inexperienced or not being able to understand but for the thirteen students at drop and shop, if one would have walked into the classroom during the service project they would have seen the face of Christ within each child as they worked hard to carry, count, and prepare each bag for someone their own age. Who says children can not serve? Not me :)

With the Birthday Bags completed we moved into one of the favorites of the day, parachute time! We moved the furniture in the youth room to make a large enough space for the parachute. Some of the games included Sharks and Lifeguards, Cat & Mouse, Climb the Mountain and Mushroom.

The end of a round of "Cat & Mouse"

Panorama under the "Mushroom"

Our final activity of the day was organized free time. Unlike youth lock-ins, one cannot just have "free time" instead it must be structured. For this several stations were set up including; legos, building blocks, play-dough,  board games (Chutes and Ladders, Battle Ship, Apples to Apples, Sorry, Candy Land etc), and coloring. I must say the biggest hit was the legos which I was glad to have borrowed from one of the families of the congregation.

Legos!

Parents arrived around 4:00pm and I was glad to see that some students did not want to leave. The day was long as being up since Moonwalkers Eclipse but I was glad for the success, due in large part to the volunteers. The fun never ends.