27 May Friendship – Harmony: Together is Better – Summer 2014 – Part 1: Our Plan
Life App: Friendship—treating others the way you want to be treated.
Theme: Harmony – Together is Better
Date: Summer, 2014
Still Thinking
I realize many of you will be launching the Life App of Friendship this coming Sunday. We will not be starting Friendship this week. Instead, we’ll be kicking off a five week series using the Summer XP – Turn it Up. You can read more about our decision to do that here. Since we are using the Friendship series as our Summer XP in July and August though, I thought I’d share some of our preliminary ideas for our set and environment.
In Part 1 of my recent series – Summer in Children’s Ministry, I talked about how we use stations throughout our environment during the summer months. Below, you will find some initial ideas we’ve brainstormed about Friendship for our stage, and our environment as a whole. As we get closer to July, I’ll post more about our process and where we landed with everything – but for now, I hope these ideas are helpful for those of you who are putting together a set/environment for Friendship this week.
I’d love for you to jump into the comments section below and share what you’re creating this week. Would love to see pictures too! And no – this is not my plan to steal all of your brilliant ideas (although I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t going to be helpful!).
Our Set
Throughout the months of July and August (coinciding with our summer series on Friendship), we are planning to offer parents the “Over the Fence” book/devotional that was premiered at OC14. Our set will be designed around the cover of that book. We want it to look like you are sitting in a backyard and the fence is around you. Here’s our plan:
- Five insulation foam panels painted blue like the sky.
- A 5-6 foot high fence similar to that on the cover – going across the entire backdrop.
- Greenery, shrubs and trees filling out the background behind and in front of the fence.
- The Summer 2014 graphic from the Harmony graphic cut out to look like a sun on one corner of the backdrop.
The word Friendship spelled out on guitar picks and hung from chain that drapes from the fence. So, basically the Harmony graphic but the word Friendship instead of Harmony and no other words.
Green artificial grass on the stage floor to resemble a grassy backyard.- Possibly a picnic table on stage and/or a grill/fire pit area with chairs.
- Possibly a sandbox, sliding board or other backyard toys on stage.
Our Environment
We like to carry the summer theme decor throughout the entire environment. All of our signage and take home resources will reflect the theme and our decor.
- We’ll have about 6 stations throughout the environment.
- Each station will be labeled with an oversized guitar pick hanging from a chain.
- We’ll carve the guitar picks from insulation foam and then label each with letters cut from a Cricut.
- We might use the same artificial grass from the stage for each station’s base.
Our Stations
These are not set in stone. We are still deciding what each station will be. For now, this is our preliminary list.
- Video Games
- Legos
- Friendship/Rainbow Loom Bracelet Making
- Board Games/Cards/Puzzles
- Four Square/Hop Scotch/Jump Ropes
- Grow your own plant (tentative)
- Make your own kite (tentative)
- Lemonade Stand (tentative) – This station will be structured and highly monitored. I’m thinking kids will come to this station as a small group. Their small group leaders will bring them (one group at a time) at the end of the morning, before parents arrive. I’m thinking we might collect quarters for lemonade, watermelon, popsicles (whatever we feature that week) and give the money collected to one of the service projects happening in our church this summer.
That’s it. Our initial plan. I’ll post our final decisions about things and our process once we enter the creation phase.
For now, what will your Friendship set and environment look like?
