How many of you participate in a vbs that allows preschoolers game time the same as other children? Every year our preschoolers are not given game time. I was just wondering if this is how it is suppose to be - only older children are allowed to have game time? If so, why?

All of our children will have outdoor game time together at the same time.

HI. we are a small church in Tn. We let the children rotate-even the preschoolers to game time...what we do is pull games from the preschool book (it is set up to be self-contained) and use those for their game time. Hope this helps...God Bless, Vickie

At our church they make the schedule to exclude preschoolers (and this year the younger elementary age) from having game time. In the place of game time we (the preschool department) have an extremely long music time.

We also include the preschoolers in rec time. Either their teachers and helpers take them out or they actually go out and have a seperate recreation time with the rec leaders. Either way, they certainly enjoy that outside time.

One thing to keep in mind regarding preschoolers and game time is this: Competition is not age appropriate for preschoolers. They don't understand winning and losing. Our schedule has 5 year olds and up going to Recreation. Our younger preschoolers still go outside, but the preschool department runs their own games. Our VBS is open to the public starting at 5 year olds. The younger groups are just teachers' children so this works well for us. You can always get another person to run recreation for your preschoolers using games in the preschool teacher guides.

This may be helpful, but one year I had the 3-4 yr olds and we were self contained. I bought butterfly nets and we had a wading pool with fish bait minnows. The children enjoyed their fishing time, We later released them into a creek, that was fun too. We also blew bubbles with huge hoops and other odd wands. We even used a plastic fly swatter, dipped in the bubble mix and held over the outflow of the airconditioner for mega mini bubbles. We put a regular treated 2x4 with the 4" side up on the ground and used it as a balance beam. They loved it.

we have seperate recreation crew to do the games with the preschool and kindergarten..they are much more relaxed games and mostly about moving and getting some of the "wiggles" out..not about competitive games.......it works well for us.........