At the end of June our parish had another faith-filled, fun and successful Catholic Kidz Camp (CKC) using another one of the Growing with the Saints excellent authentically Catholic programs!  Many may be more familiar with the term "VBS"(Vacation Bible School).  CKC is very similar to VBS, but CKC is....you got it...Catholic and CKC is the new VBS!   Growing with the Saints was written by Catholics for Catholics! Same concept as VBS, which is to teach our youth (and adults too) the Good News of Jesus Christ, but CKC also highlights the many specific, beautiful teachings of our Catholic Church through skits, arts and crafts, games, Bible stories, snacks and music!! 



This was our parish's 6th year using the Growing with the Saints CKC programs and they have all been excellent!  Here is a list of the programs we have used the past five years and the links take you to my blog posts about each themed CKC:

June 2012: Vatican Express featuring St. Jerome
June 2013: Assorted Saints and the Virtues of Faith, Hope and Love
June 2014: Parade Around the Our Father featuring St. Joseph of Cupertino
June 2015: Set Sail with the Holy Trinity featuring St. Patrick
June 2016: Parachute with the Angels and St. Catherine Laboure

This year's theme was Growing with the Saints newest CKC, Tracking Mary: Mysteries & Messages.




For an overview of the week be sure to visit the Camp Overview page to check out all the fun and learning that the campers did during the week!  

Ms. Anne, our wonderfully organized and hard-working children's youth ministry director, prints out a schedule for each grade level to follow through the week.  The schedule is broken into time slots where volunteer adult and youth leaders lead their age group around to each themed station.

With another adult volunteer and two wonderful teen volunteers, I lead a group of rising first graders throughout the week and we were "Bernadette's Brakemen"(to go along with the train theme) Ms. MJ and I even wore "conductor" hats and had our train whistles throughout the week.  :)




Each morning began with the sign of the cross and prayers as a group and then the youth acted out skits to go with each day's topic.  The youth worked hard and did a fantastic job!

Here are our rising 1st graders walking to their next station.

I brought in my personal Shining Light Dolls and the line leaders held the doll with our group's sign when we learned about the apparition for the day that went with the doll. Our group loved holding the Our Lady of Lourdes doll, Our Lady of Fatima doll and Our Lady of Guadalupe doll. 


Lots of fun music, crafts, Bible stories and learning more about the apparitions of Mary and the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary.

Like in years' past at CKC, each age group had the opportunity to visit the chapel in our church and spend time in front of the Blessed Sacrament adoring our Lord.  After the leaders spoke to our first grade group about how to show reverence and talk to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, our class went into the chapel a few minutes to listen to our Lord speak to our hearts in the silence.


This week's CKC was so fun and the children, teens and adults learned so much about our Catholic faith!  Many adults weren't aware of all the details of the Marian apparition stories so it was a blessing to learn more along with the campers!

I look forward to CKC each year as a parent and a regular volunteer and I love to learn from all the children that attend!  I'm also grateful that my older children volunteer their time to help during the week and my younger children enjoy being campers!  It's beautiful to see our Catholic faith, which is full of Truth, wonder and treasures, being taught in fun and creative ways!  I am so grateful for the Growing with the Saints programs and all those that work hard to create such great programs!  I thank Ms. Anne for all her hard work and the many helping hands that help bring our Catholic parish an authentically Catholic CKC!   We look forward to next year's CKC!








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Last week our parish had another faith-filled, fun and successful Catholic Kidz Camp (CKC) using another one of the Growing with the Saints excellent authentically Catholic programs!  Many may be more familiar with the term "VBS"(Vacation Bible School).  CKC is very similar to VBS, but CKC is....you got it...Catholic and CKC is the new VBS!   Growing with the Saints was written by Catholics for Catholics! Same concept as VBS, which is to teach our youth (and adults too) the Good News of Jesus Christ, but CKC also highlights the many specific, beautiful teachings of our Catholic Church through skits, arts and crafts, games, Bible stories, snacks and music!!  (snacks and music are favorite stations among the campers! :) )


This was our parish's 5th year using the Growing with the Saints CKC programs and they have all been excellent!  Here is a list of the programs we have used the past four years and the links take you to my blog posts about each themed CKC:

June 2012: Vatican Express featuring St. Jerome
June 2013: Assorted Saints and the Virtues of Faith, Hope and Love
June 2014: Parade Around the Our Father featuring St. Joseph of Cupertino
June 2015: Set Sail with the Holy Trinity featuring St. Patrick

This year's theme was Parachute with the Angels and St. Catherine Laboure.


For an overview of the week be sure to visit the Camp Overview page to check out all the fun and learning that the campers did during the week!  

I mentioned above that the campers seemed to like the snack and music "stations".  They love to eat and dance alot! :)  Ms. Anne, our wonderfully organized and hard-working children's youth ministry director, prints out a schedule for each grade level to follow through the week.  The schedule is broken into time slots where volunteer adult and youth leaders lead their age group around to each themed station.

This year we parachuted with the angels to:
*Control Tower Drop Zone (in the parish hall where CKC began and ended each day)
*Uplift Music
*Chutes Snacks
*Target Bible
*Runaway Games
*Cloud Crafts
*Faith in Flight (this station is where the group leaders taught a brief lesson and read from their copy of St. Catherine Laboure storybook)

With another adult volunteer and two wonderful teen volunteers, I lead a group of rising first graders throughout the week and we were "Gabriel's Gang".   Here is the schedule we followed during CKC Mon.-Thurs. and Friday's schedule looked a bit different (not pictured) because of the kids' final performances for parents to close out CKC week...
Each morning began with the sign of the cross and prayers as a group (Hail Mary, Angel of God prayer, and St. Michael prayer) and then the youth acted out skits to go with each day's topic.  The youth worked hard and did a fantastic job! And then of course, each group had a designated snack time during the morning!

Here are my rising 1st graders walking to their next station with our wonderful teen helpers with the second adult leader at the head of the line in the background.

Lots of games, sweat, water breaks and laughter! :) 


Like last year, each age group had the opportunity to visit the chapel in our church and spend time in front of the Blessed Sacrament adoring our Lord.  After I spoke to our first grade group about how to show reverence and talk to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, our class went into the chapel a few minutes to listen to our Lord speak to our hearts in the silence.  I didn't take a photo of our class this year during adoration, but this is a photo from a few years ago during CKC with one of our priests.


I look forward to CKC each year as a parent and a regular volunteer and I love to learn from all the children that attend!  I'm also grateful that my older children volunteer their time to help during the week and my younger children enjoy being campers!  It's beautiful to see our Catholic faith, which is full of Truth, wonder and treasures, being taught in fun and creative ways!  I am so grateful for the Growing with the Saints programs and all those that work hard to create such great programs!  I thank Ms. Anne for all her hard work and the many helping hands that help bring our Catholic parish an authentically Catholic CKC!   We look forward to next year's CKC!

Last week our parish had another faith-filled, fun and successful Catholic Kidz Camp (also referred to as "The Totally Catholic VBS").  As mentioned in this previous post, our parish has been using the Catholic publisher Growing with the Saints for several years now and they have created wonderful programs and I have reviewed each one from the past several summers.

Our wonderful, hard working youth director, Ms. Anne, said that many children were disappointed that the camp only lasted a week!  They were ready for more fun! I helped lead a group of rising 1st graders throughout the week, along with my wonderful friend and some teen helpers.  My 7 year old daughter was a camper in the 2nd grade group, while my 3 older children volunteered their time and talents doing various jobs with the campers.  My almost 2 year old was a champ in the nursery at church!

Below is a summary and a glimpse of our week where we "Set Sail with the Holy Trinity featuring St. Patrick!   You can also view the Set Sail Program Overview .

Each morning all the campers met in the large hall to see a skit by our parish youth. They all did a wonderful job!  The skit was about parts of St. Patrick's life.  (he's the guy in green in the photos)  The creative and fun props for the skit were made by the Black family along with some youth helpers.


After the skit was done, then each group was led by their leaders to each of the 6 activities: Bible Activity in the Bible Beacon room, Gangplank Games, Crafts, Snacks (a youth and adult favorite!), Music and Group Activity (where the leaders read from The Adventures of Saint Patrick storybook and taught the faith lesson for each day).

Below are some of my 1st graders walking down the hall to another activity as the line leader holds our "Playful Pirates" sign. Each grade was assigned a cute name and given a sign to hold.

Sitting at the table during our snack time is Deacon Mike who will be ordained a priest next June, God-willing.  His green shamrock headband was a hit that I gifted to him for the day. :)  Deacon Mike is visiting our parish during the summer and everyone enjoyed chatting with him at the snack table.  Our teen helper is reading from The Adventures of Saint Patrick storybook. 


For the Bible Activity in the Bible Beacon room the volunteers read a story from Sacred Scripture and then did a fun activity that centered around the Bible story.  In the photo below the campers are pretending to be various animals God made.  They are also acting out the good Samaritan parable.  The kids really liked using the rolled up gauze to help their neighbors in need!

The "Gangplank Games" were always a fun way to exert some energy and creatively memorize the scripture verse for that day.   Here is the list of Scripture verses my 1st graders learned through the week:

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you..."  (Jeremiah 1:5) 

"With all my heart I seek you;..." (Psalm 119:10)

"But as for me, I am filled with power, with the spirit of the Lord..." (Micah 3:8)

"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you." ( 2 Corithians 13:13)

"As the Father has sent me, so I send you." (John 20:21)  


And don't you just love this sidewalk chalk art created by one of my first graders?   Someone is praying saying "help the kids be hole"  ("holy")

Each day the campers made a new craft around the lesson's theme.   I had a creative and artistic group of 1st graders!  It's always fun to see all their creations.

The campers also really enjoyed "Songs of the Sea" Music room where they danced and sang each day to various songs. For our closing, my first graders sang "My name is Bishop Patrick" which is a wonderful song about St. Patrick and the hand motions to show the Holy Trinity was something I don't think kids and adults will forget since it was so much fun! 

On Thursday, we were blessed to go into our church and listen to Deacon Mike speak a little about Adoration with the monstrance and humeral veil, the Eucharist and a little bit about himself.  What a gift to be able to share our faith with so many young people in this way!  Some of Catholic and non-Catholic campers may have never been exposed to adoration and the monstrance or have been around a young seminarian so this was a great opportunity and faith-filled learning experience for all.


A BIG thanks to Ms. Anne for all that she does to make Catholic Kidz Camp a success each summer! It's always sad to see another camp finished, but our family always says that camp is one of the highlights of our summer so we, along with many others, look forward to another great time next year!

The past several years our parish has had Catholic Kidz Camp (CKC) each summer (a.k.a VBS) in June.  I have volunteered to help with CKC each year and I love leading the groups of children and they teach me as much as I teach them (I think they teach me more actually!).

I love the faith-filled week and I love sharing our Catholic faith in such a fun way!  I also love that we use a CKC publisher, Growing with the Saints, that is authentically Catholic...our Catholic faith is too amazing and too rich in beauty and wisdom to get a "watered-down" version of our faith! I'm so glad Growing with the Saints is a CKC made by Catholics for Catholic parishes.

I just love the mission statement of the Growing with the Saints program too....


"Growing with the Saints, Inc. is committed to handing down the Catholic Faith received from Jesus and the apostles. The Holy Spirit is our unseen ever present guide as we prayerfully impart the Catholic faith with its rich tradition. We utilize Sacred Scripture, tradition, and the lives of the saints to accomplish our purpose. We are dedicated to inspire young children to fall in love with Jesus and his Church. GWTS is committed to preserving the memory of the holy saints and calling children to “holiness” by imitating