Awana

My kids love AWANA. They memorize scripture, play fun games and have a short Bible lesson. Our Awana club gives out play money for each verse, or section, depending on the age level and other factors and then the kids can spend their "money" on items in the Awana store.

It's a great program and my kids look forward to attending each week!

My son is in his second year; he started at 4yrs old. It's fun, he loves it, and I love that he's in it. I don't really know what they do in the bigger classes, but for the "cubbies" (young kids) I can tell you.
In my opinion, it's really what you make of it. Some people drop off their kids and have them trying to learn the verse in the parking lot, last second. They play and that's all. But with his books, kinda skipped over the first part of the lesson with the little animals and a dinky story, but we do the Bible lesson, read it in our Bible as well, talk about it, and learn the scripture and location of that verse throughout the week. On the page that you sign off saying they learned it (and the teacher signs it when the child quotes the verse), there's an ''extra'' section that is voluntary. We like to do it. It will sometimes ask the child to remember the PREVIOUS week (or 2, or 3) verses, and have a little project you can do. For example, learning "Love your neighbor": we brainstormed ways to show love to others around us and then we made cookies for the 2 old ladies that lived across from us, and we introduced ourselves and had a nice talk with them. Joseph picked up trash out of the neighbor's front yard (just some litter that had blown up on their lawn). Another time we learned about having faith as a mustard seed, and saved and dried some seeds from something we ate that day (apples). That gave me an idea and we planted little tomato seeds in a tray and watched the little seedlings slowly start to grow out of the dirt. We'll watch them grow and produce fruit, which has other seeds, that will later produce more fruit, all from a couple seeds. That's just the extra little bits that are voluntary. I think it's just good foundational things. Not "all" a child needs all week, but helping to lay a foundation is great.
Awanas follows along with the school year and has vacations when school has vacations. For that reason, I also bought a supplementary (extra) book that isn't covered in the class, as stuff that we could do this past summer as a family and that was nice.
I think Awanas is kind of like a vacation Bible school meets cubscouts. They have their little uniform or vest, earn badges, learn scriptures, sing songs, have a little lesson, play games, have some social time with peers, and are encouraged to do some neat things if you go through the extra bits in the book with them. The church where he attends Awanas is a small church and they don't give out the "money", but they keep track of it in a notebook (you earn "Awanas bucks" by earning points for things like coming in uniform, bringing a Bible, attending church---which doesn't have to be at THEIR church, if they have a special night where they dress up listed in the calendar, or bring a friend, etc they earn the "money", and at the church Joseph attends they open the store before Christmas, and at the end of the school year).

We have our three grandchildren (4,6,8) involved in Awana and they love it. Not only are they learning Bible stories and memorizing scripture, but they have fun doing it. Club time also involves team building physical activity games. As a parent, you are also expected to be involved at home reviewing scripture with your child and also doing family activities. I highly recommend AWANA.

My kids always liked it and we've had 4 clubbers through the years. This year things have gone sour for us. Our church decided to do the Awana games this year and they insisted on making it a huge push to get ready. They practiced 2-4 days per week and it became just miserable after awhile. We had the first part of the games that is the quizzing. They still have the physical games coming in a few weeks. This is the only year any of my children became part of that and the other church we went to never made such a huge deal of it.

My mother became a leader and it seems that the Awana headquarters make the schedule and rule it pretty much like girl scouts. I don't like how little control the leaders seem to have now. I don't know if it's changed, or if previous churches we attended just didn't abide by the rules. To me it's become a mini military like venture and I'm not happy about it.

I suggest you have a good talk with the leaders and get a feel for how well they all get a long and the way they handle things.

Our younger kids were all in Awana and loved it. They didn't have it when our older kids were young but they did great on the Scripture memory, got badges, played games in the Awana circle, etc., got Awana money to buy things with the reward 'money', and then they have a time where they go to compete with other Awana groups. It's fun for them and they just need to fill in the book and learn the verses each week. I think it's an excellent program.

absolutely love it!!

My kids did AWANA for years. they only now don't participate because we live in a small town and don't have high school level awanas here anymore. basically the way AWANAs works is they have three activities, game time, lessons time, book time. they have a lesson to do (at their own pace) through the week with verses to memorize and then at club they play games, work on, review and say their verses and hear a lesson. Our kids enjoyed this all the way through. this is actually the first year they've not participated. Our oldest went through his senior year in high school in AWANA.