Lifeway Boomerang Express VBS Review

Our church recently used Lifeway's Boomerang Bay Vacation Bible School (VBS) curriculum. We found it to be user friendly for the planners and lots of fun for the children as they traveled to the "Outback" while enjoying the Australian themed decorations suggested in the curriculum.

VBS in years past tended to be much more difficult as one teacher would be assigned to a particular age group and would be expected to develop meaningful activities for that group during the entire time. Lifeway has made VBS much easier in that the kids rotate through various portions of the program, including Bible study, music, crafts, and recreation and snacks. They also have video segments regarding missions that we use at a later date with other programs, but we offered the chance to donate money toward a mission project headed up by a local young man who came to our church to speak about his trip in the past.

The Boomerang Express has a theme of "It All Comes Back to Jesus" with five different tracks:

• Follow Him
• Worhip Him
• Confess Him
• Serve Him
• Obey Him

Here is some information on the various stations suggested in Boomerang Express:

• Bible Study: gives suggestions for various grades with fun ideas for making the Biblical stories "come alive" for kids
• Music: includes several CDs with the music and a DVD with instructions for adding some signs to the singing--a lot of the kids particularly enjoyed the nice variety of songs
• Crafts and Recreation: gives several choices to go along with the theme of the week
• Snacks: Gives suggestions for snacks that kept the kids guessing all week. The kids were intrigued by Koala Krunch, Kangaroo Kababs, Kangaroo Tails and the like. My only concern is that my kids have multiple food sensitivities, including gluten, milk, soy, nuts, and corn products. It can be a real drag for kids with food sensitivities to have to watch all of the other kids eat the "cool" stuff while they end up eating foods from home. I suppose I could have checked to see what would be served each night and made a bigger effort to make something comparable for my kids, but I was also helping with VBS and work quite a few part-time jobs. Sometimes there is just not enough of me to go around.

You may also want to read my review on the Boomerang Express DVD.

My Viewpoint:

Our church is blessed to have very active adult members. We had approximately 40 children each night with close to 40 adult volunteers to help with the program each night. This certainly helped the program to be even better. With very few adult members to help, this Boomerang Express VBS could probably still work well. In the end, we had four children in our VBS this year to verbalize an interest in speaking with our pastor about their wish to accept Jesus into their hearts. My oldest daughter was one of the children last year who expressed an interest after VBS, so I have seen first-hand how VBS can perhaps change a child's life forever.