SUPADAYS Supadays
A fun one-day kids’ program for outreach events, holidays and weekend camps
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Contents About CEP Supadays........................................................................................................4 About this Program: Time Traveller................................................................................5 Program Timetable...........................................................................................................6 What’s on the CD-ROM and DVD?..................................................................................8 Getting Started.................................................................................................................9 Recruiting a Leadership Team.......................................................................................9 Dressing the Set.........................................................................................................11 Registration Numbers and Group Breakdowns...........................................................12 Helpful Hints for Registrations....................................................................................13 Helpful Hints for Advertising and Promotion..............................................................13 Reaching out to Parents and Carers............................................................................14 Program Guide................................................................................................................15 Program Aim..............................................................................................................15 Outcomes..................................................................................................................15 Key Verses..................................................................................................................15 Supplies…..................................................................................................................16 Ice-breakers................................................................................................................16 Program Starts................................................................................................................18 Welcome...................................................................................................................18 Singing......................................................................................................................18 Big Group Time #1..........................................................................................................19 Introduction—Life of Jesus Animation........................................................................19 Drama........................................................................................................................20 Small Group Activity...................................................................................................24 Rotating Activities..........................................................................................................26 Indoor Games............................................................................................................26 Skills Challenge..........................................................................................................29 Events of the Old Testament Obstacle Course.............................................................31 Craft..........................................................................................................................34 Chill Out Time............................................................................................................36 Multimedia Fun..........................................................................................................37 Big Group Time #2..........................................................................................................38 Drama........................................................................................................................38 Review and Memory Verse Activity.............................................................................42
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SUPADAYS Supadays About During the year, there might be occasions when you, as the Children’s Ministry Coordinator, just need a one-day program for Infants and Primary School-aged children (aged five to 12). Such an occasion might be a ‘pupil-free’ day at the start of a school term when school teachers are busy doing staff development, or a one-off special event on a weekend where the adults are otherwise engaged. Perhaps you need a program for the children at a Parish weekend away or camp. CEP Supadays have been developed with these occasions in mind! If you are holding a one-off event during school holidays or on a pupil-free day, the children attending may be from the broader community and unfamiliar with Bible teaching (other than perhaps what they have learned in Religious Education classes at school). On such days, working parents could be looking for care for their kids that is both enjoyable and safe. As such, CEP Supadays programs are geared to cater for both churched and un-churched children. Remember too that Supadays are a good way to attract families to your year-round ministry activities. For un-churched families, coming onto church property and meeting church members via a Supaday is a nonthreatening introduction to Christianity—a kind of try-before-you-buy program. Once kids have a taste of what it’s like to come to a church activity, they’ll be keen to have the same fun all year at one of your mid-week clubs or Sunday program. Families will feel comfortable coming to another event, including Easter and Christmas services, as an entry point to becoming a full member in God’s time.
Why use CEP Supaday material? Developing and then implementing a program for even a single day’s event can be a time-consuming job for Children’s Ministry leaders, or a daunting task for a lay worker, who usually has other church and family commitments. It involves writing solid Bible-based teaching around a theme that’s appealing to children in Infants and Primary School, and then coming up with fun activities to fill out the program. At CEP, we’ve teamed up with experienced Children’s Ministry workers at St Paul’s Anglican Church, Castle Hill, Sydney to come up with a series of Supaday programs that are super-easy to run! All the work is done for you, from the development of fun themes to reliable Bible teaching, memorable dramas, age-appropriate physical activities, craft and more. Our programs have been tried and tested by the St Paul’s team of staff and volunteers, so you can be assured that the program works effectively and is culturally relevant. We’ve also included practical advice on scheduling, recruiting your team, handling registrations and arranging the children into age-appropriate groups. We even help you advertise and promote your Supaday. In this manual, you’ll find helpful hints on how to get your community involved, as well as support materials that can be tailored to include your church details. If this is the first CEP Supaday pack you have purchased, look out for our other titles. More will be added to the range so that you can run a different Supaday theme each year and keep the children coming back to your church. We pray that this resource will be a blessing to your church as you seek to make our Lord Jesus known. Julie Firmstone Series Editor
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About this Program: Time Traveller Time Traveller is set in the workshop of Professor von Razza, a slightly crazy inventor of cool but not always successful gadgets. Keen to verify the evidence for Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Professor engages the help of his young friend, Andy, to test his latest invention—a time machine. Together they journey back to first-century Palestine to find eyewitnesses to the fact that Jesus rose from the grave. In the meantime, Adele is keen to find her brother, Andy, to show him her latest Media and Technology project—an exciting animation on the life of Jesus. Through these fun characters, the children will be introduced to (or reminded of) how Jesus died in our place on the cross so that we could be friends with God. They will learn that Jesus really did conquer death when he rose again. The good news for us is that now we too will live forever if we trust in him as Lord and Saviour. The theme is supported by a variety of engaging activities to reinforce the key message as well as entertain the children, some of whom may not have been to a church-based event before. The program consists of:
Big Group Time Two sessions where all the children come together in one big group. During the first of these, the children see an Animation on the Life of Jesus and Part 1 of the Drama where the actors interact with a ‘live-action’ video. The Small Group Activity that follows ensures that the children understand the Bible message conveyed during the Animation and Drama. In the second session, Part 2 of the Drama is enacted (again with the ‘live-action’ video) and the teaching is again reinforced with a Review and Memory Verse Activity. The children are given the opportunity to respond to the message via a prayer.
Rotating Activities There are six different activities to be placed in separate locations around your church facilities. Each group will participate in these activities once in the day. So each activity area will house one group at a time in succession with a five-to-seven-minute transition time (where one group leaves and the next one arrives). This time allows the Activity Leader and helpers time to re-set equipment and clean up any mess from group to group. For Time Traveller, the activities are as follows: 1. Indoor Games 2. Skills Challenge 3. Events of the Old Testament Obstacle Course 4. Craft 5. Chill Out Time 6. Multimedia Fun An explanation of each of these activities is provided in the Program Guide.
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Movie time If your Supaday is being run on a school day, such as a pupil-free day, then many parents will be geared up to collect their children at the usual end-of-school time. In Australia, this would be around 3:30 pm. Working parents are likely to collect their children at 5 pm. If your Supaday event is coinciding with a church-run event, there may be a point later in the day when the children return to their parents or participate in a whole-ofchurch or family activity. In both of these instances, you may not need a full day of activities. For this reason, we suggest screening a movie session with an appropriate G-rated DVD for any children who might need to stay behind after activities finish before their parents are able to collect them. (The Back to the Future movies from the mid-80s are thematically perfect but do have a PG rating in Australia. You can include a permission statement in your registration form if you wish to screen a movie with a higher rating than General.) This will allow you to be flexible if children need to leave at various times.
Program Timetable • Be prepared for early arrivals Inevitably there will be children who turn up early because they are excited about the day or because it is convenient for their parents to drop them off before the advertised time. Designate a few leaders who are good at playing games to be ready to keep these children occupied. Get the team in charge of registrations and name tags to be ready to cater for the early-comers. • Allow enough time for registrations of large numbers of children If you have a large number of registrations, some of which may need payments finalised, allow more time for the welcoming and registration process. In the suggested program below, we have allowed 30 minutes for welcoming and registration. However if you have in excess of 75 children attending, you will either need more helpers in the welcoming team or an earlier start time. • Post program details in key areas Have numerous copies of the Program Timetable, and a map of where each activity and the Big Group Time sessions will be held, up on the walls around the church. That way, the leadership team and helpers can easily check what is coming up next and guide children to where they need to be. You may even wish to give leaders a smaller version to put in their name-tag holders.
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