Each year, our Vacation Bible School program tries to bring STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) into the study of our faith and this year (2022) was no different! The list of the paragraphs from the Catechism of the Catholic Church that were discussed this year were: CCC 159, 179, 997, 1020, 1489, 1490, 1520, 1772, and 1773. Students learned various religious terms throughout the week such as faith, miracle, saints, feasts, New Testament, Old Testament, passions, prayer, “woman” (in relation to Jesus calling Mary woman), and “new Eve.” We focused on the following readings but did discuss a couple others as well: John 2:1-12, John 9:1-12, Matt 14:22-33, and John 11:38-44.

For the Wedding at Cana, we discussed physical and chemical changes and how the water turning to wine WITHOUT adding, subtracting, or doing anything to it, was a miracle chemical change. We experimented with 6 different white powders and vinegar to see which ones would cause a chemical change and we discussed our results.
For Jesus healing the blind man, we discussed how blind people see and don’t see. We learned so much about the parts of the eye and how the eye works. We analyzed how light works with the help of prisms and then we make our own working eye “model.” We also learned about how scientists, doctors, and engineers are working together to find ways to help blind people “see.”
The day we discussed Jesus walking on water was a day all focused on magnets. We also got creative and made our own interpretations of the story with some artwork, attached Jesus to a magnet, and were then able to get him to move across the water with the help of another magnet. But to get Jesus to “walk” on water—aka—float in our case, we learned about how a levtron train works. We watched a short video, discussed the polarity of magnets and then made our own Jesus that hovered over water!
On our final day of camp, we learned about Jesus raising Lazarus. We discussed various ways that Lazarus would have left the cave since he was bound up, and this helped us when we made our own rising Lazarus. We learned what a servo motor was, what was inside a battery, how to create a circuit with a switch, and then put all the pieces together. When we moved the switched, we had a Lazarus that was lying on his back to suddenly being popped up on his feet!


Faith Formation Director, Alyssa Choraszewski, can be reached at dre@saintpriscilla.org