Reimagining VBS
This summer will be unique. So many things that have become part of the natural flow of summer won’t happen this year, or if they do, will be very different from what came before. The one experience that I have been deeply involved with for many years is Vacation Bible School. I’m such a VBS veteran that several years ago I began creating my own original virtue-focused content to enrich the packaged curriculums used at my parish Church. As “Mrs. Virtue Lady,” I shared some really wonderful moments with the children. Fortunately for me, they seemed to enjoy the unique content a LOT!
A Virtue Building Season
So, now that most VBS and similar programs have been cancelled, I felt the need to help families experience a virtue-rich faith-filled FUN experience at home. But this fresh way to think of VBS doesn’t have to be confined to just one week. Let’s expand the meaning of those letters and embrace this summer as a “Virtue-Building Season.” This summer especially, our children need us to show them the path through difficulty, calamity, and disaster does not lead to the dead-end of fear, anger, and depression. How do we find a better, more confident and positive way? We need HEROES!
I created the Tiny Virtue Heroes to be little pretend friends who come alongside and en-courage us to desire virtue. These characters help children imagine virtue as their real super-powers. This actually a good way to imagine this spiritual reality, because virtue-POWERED habits in us are an expression of the SUPER-natural strength of God’s grace. Talented artist Jeanie Egolf, has given each of these Heroes a truly charming look. As these Heroes captivate young imaginations, they help our children to associate each virtue with a friendly character, and invite a desire in them to be virtue-strong.
All the information about the heroes is available online for FREE. It’s easy for a parent or grandparent to hand a child their smart phone open to the Tiny Virtue Heroes™ page so the child can see the heroes, find out the heroes’ virtue-powers, discover their favorite Mission Virtue Hero, and more. Theses characters also help we parents call to mind the broad array of positive qualities we know as virtues, and help us explain them in simple terms to our children. Each for their own reasons, Children and adults can all consider these Tiny Heroes as our imaginative virtue side-kicks.
Mission Virtue Challenge
The easy, yet powerful resource that can help you make this a Virtue Building Summer is the MISSION VIRTUE CHALLENGE. It functions with a dry-erase magnet board that can be used in three ways to fit your family’s needs. First, you can lay it on the floor or a table and use it as a board game in which children get bonus jumps for quick prayers for mission regions of the world, or for learning the names of virtues, or Virtue Heroes™. Or use it as an aid to prayer in which a child moves a token along from circle to circle as the family prays the Rosary or any other kind of family devotional prayer. Lastly, it can be used as a behavior reward/incentive chart in which you can mark with stars, checks, or magnets, a child’s progress in choosing to think or pray, do or say virtue! Some families use it for all three. The beauty is that you have the flexibility. Just get the dry-erase magnet, print out the free downloadable TVH Character Guide, and the TVH Virtue “Powers” Guide and you’ll have all you need to grow character and conscience in your children…naturally, with fun and smiles, this summer. Get the full description and instructions HERE.
MISSION VIRTUE CHALLENGE Dry-erase Magnet Board
Rewarding Heroic Virtue
There is a growing collection of items available for parents to help energize the virtue imagination of children. Celebrate small successes in what children Think & Pray, Do & Say by rewarding a child with a character key chain. Give a child a spiritually powerful form of pretending with the nightly affirmation, “I AM a Virtue Hero” on a pillowcase. The pillowcases are designed to also be used as superhero capes, to facilitate hours of virtue super hero fun during the day time too. The Virtue Heroes Store on Zazzle also has, stickers, iron-on Virtue Heroes V-flame logos, t-shirts, tote bags and more, to keep children’s fun virtue-focused all summer and beyond.
Virtue Hero Story Books
Over time, there will a picture-book story featuring each of the Tiny Virtue Heroes™ who greet the children from their circles on the MISSION VIRTUE CHALLENGE board. The first story, about Mo the mouse, Tiny Virtue Hero of HUMILITY is titled, A Mouse and a Miracle. It will be released in July. In this story, Mo shares the amazing story of the moment in which his hero, humble Mary, experienced the miracle of the Annunciation. Humility is the spiritual strength that is the foundation of all the other virtues. Mo and his story are the perfect introduction for a child to begin to grow to a rich interior life, sparkling with the grace of God alive in that child’s mind, and heart, and imagination.
No matter what challenge or crisis we face, one thing that does not change: each situation offers us, as parents, an opportunity to build virtue strength in our children. Like the father in the extraordinary film, Life is Beautiful, we parents can model how to deal with difficulties in ways that preserve our children’s strength, innocence, and joy. Tiny Virtue Heroes™ and the MISSION VIRTUE CHALLENGE are here to help us do just that.
Virtue Heroes™ Creator, Cathy Gilmore, expresses her “author’s voice” in first-person storytelling for children in which a little animal creature tells the story of a powerful moment in Christian spiritual history. Her first published work, Easter Bunny’s Amazing Day was a team effort with her sister to create a fresh “first person” account of the Resurrection of Jesus, as told by an adorable little bunny. Cathy built on that story’s success with the picture book, Little Lamb Finds Christmas, in which a lost lamb named Lemi tells the story how he found not only baby Jesus in Bethlehem, but also discovered something more - a peaceable kingdom in which lions and lambs can be friends. Cathy is building on that foundation with the launch of the Tiny Virtue Heroes™ series of characters, resources, and storybooks. Moshe’s Tiny Virtue Hero story of Humility is told in the children’s picture book titled A Mouse and a Miracle, scheduled for release in summer 2020.