Providing inexpensive ways for children's ministers to integrate technology into their ministry.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Funoodles


While not strictly technology, Funoodles can do great things for you children's ministry program. Well maybe not great things either. We recently held our annual VBS production. This year we did Noah. Our is a four night program where the first hour is spent in class doing crafts, snack, learning etc. The second hour is watching a musical drama. This is where some real creative minds try to make the story real for the kids. I am usually part of the set crew for this. The best way I know of for doing the inside of Noah's ark is to use scaffolding. The problem is how to make scaffolding not look like scaffolding. Enter the funoodle. We used 50 funoodles to achieve a more authentic look. We got the kind with the hole in the middle and, using a razor knife, cut to the core of the funoodle. We then got some brown paint and slathered it on using a rubber glove. We didn't try for any kind of even coating. In the end its the unevenness that really makes this work. All that was left was to open the funoodles and place them around the piping of the scaffolding. They hold themselves on. What we didn't cover with funoodles was covered by brown duct tape. This really completed the look and gave our scaffolding a rustic, non-scaffolding look.

Somehow since I began doing VBS, I have used funoodles every year for something. One year I used them to build a small cartoonish fence. Another year used one split in half, along with a head band to be the 'plank in one's eye'. The best thing about funoodle is they are cheap. I like cheap.