Update September 14, 2022.

It is almost time!  We are so excited to begin our new Awana year, which starts on Friday, October 7th and runs every Friday (until May 19, 2023) from 6:00pm – 7:30pm  at our church located in South Hadley.  Check out the current CALENDAR to see which nights we have club, when we don’t, and the special nights we have going on. 

This year, you will see a few changes, including the time (which has changed from a 60 minutes  to 90 minutes), snack being offered due to the increase in the club meeting time, uniforms being required, the ability to pay dues up front for the year, and a few fun nights being added!  Please see the sections below for more details on what has or has not changed.

Club Nights: Club runs most Friday nights from October 7, 2022 through May 19, 2023.  Arrival is 5:45-6:00 and the opening ceremony begins promptly at 6:00pm.  The opening ceremony will last approximately 10 minutes and will consist of prayer and birthday kids rolling the Club Dice to try to gain extra points for their respective Club to spend at STORE.  At 6:10pm, we break out into our respective clubs and have our lesson, snack, activity, and gym game time.  The last 10 minutes (7:20pm – 7:30pm), we will gather once again for awards, announcements, and closing prayer.

Snacks:  Snacks are back!  Due to the longer club night, we have decided to offer snack time.  It is very important that you list any allergies your children have in the registration form. 

Uniforms: Uniforms are required and can be purchased using the ORDER FORM.  If you are not sure what you need for your child, feel free to send me an email or call me and I will be happy to help you!  For each night that your children remember to wear their uniform, they will receive points they can use to spend on items during our STORE night.

Dues:  Dues are $.50 per night per child.  Each night your children remember their dues, they will receive points that they can use to spend on items during our STORE night.  If you would like the option of paying up front for the entire club year, the dues are $13.50 per child (payable by cash or check made out to Second Baptist Church with AWANA in the Notes section). 

Books/Bible: In the past, we have always required each clubber (Cubbies, Sparks, TNT) to purchase a lesson book.  However, a few of the clubs (Sparks and TNT) have decided to continue teaching lessons with the weekly sheet as opposed to the book.  Books are still available for purchase if you choose.  Bibles are highly encouraged.  For each night that your children remember to bring their Bibles, they will receive points they can use to spend on items during our STORE night.

Special Nights: Please check out our CALENDAR to see what specials we have going on each night.  We have added back a few fun nights, such as Minute-to-Win-It, St. Patty’s Day Green, Wacky Hair Day, and Backwards Night.  At least once a month, we will have a pajama and food drive night, which allows us to collect food for our community’s pantries.  If you are signed up for text alerts, you will get a weekly text reminding you of our Awana night and anything special you need to know for that night.

Update September 7, 2022. Welcome back to another exciting Awana year! We are hard at work getting ready to offer your children a safe and fun place to learn about Jesus Christ. I am updating the webpage for the upcoming year and hope to have everything ready to go by September 15th. We will start our Awana year on Friday, October 7, 2022 and each club night runs from 6:00pm - 7:30pm. Please check back soon to see more updates!

Update March 25, 2022. It is hard to believe we only have 6 more Awana nights left! Our in-person club nights are running very successfully and safely. With COVID being less of a challenge these days, we are finding it is no longer necessary to offer the Zoom option. Therefore, effective this week, we will discontinue the Zoom option and uploaded recordings. If the state of the pandemic changes again in the future, I will revisit the Zoom option.

Please join us on Friday, May 20th, 2022 from 6:00pm - 7:30pm for our final Awana night! We will enjoy pizza and cupcakes together, share in our successes during our Awards ceremony, and end the night with some running around, bouncehouse fun, and enjoying each other’s company. All parents/guardians are invited and encouraged to come. As always, please contact me via my cell (508-561-6795) or email (awana@sbcsouthhadley.com) if you have any questions or concerns.

Update March 5, 2022. Second Baptist Church (SBC) follows the Town of South Hadley’s COVID Protocols. As of Saturday, March 5, 2022, the mask mandate in South Hadley was lifted and masks are optional. SBC has given program leaders the option to keep or remove the mask mandate in their programs. After much prayer, careful thought, and evaluation, I feel our Awana program is low-risk due to several factors, including number of children in attendance, the space we have available to spread everyone out, and historical experiences concerning our current program. Therefore, I will be lifting the required mask mandate for Awana nights beginning Friday, March 11, 2022. As always, when masks are not required, children/volunteers are most welcome to wear them and may continue to social distance if they/their guardian(s) feel it safest to do so. You can read the updated COVID policy here. Please reach out to me via my cell (508-561-6795) or email (awana@sbcsouthhadley.com) should you have any questions or concerns. Thank you so much for your patience and cooperating during these rapidly changing times.

Update December 19, 2021. I am so proud to announce that Awana is going very well this year! We have managed to overcome the challenges presented by the pandemic and are making way in creating disciples. The kids are having fun and have been an utter joy to teach! Watching them grow has been an experience filled with excitement and joy and we are very much looking forward to ringing in the New Year with more rewarding club nights. Be sure to check out the photo gallery for a peak at some of the fun we’ve been having!

Update August 23, 2021. We are so excited to offer our ministry this year to all families looking to enrich their children with the blessings of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Awana year will begin on Friday, October 15, 2021 and end on Friday, May 20, 2022. The format will look the same as it did last year. We will meet from 6:30pm - 7:30pm most Friday nights (check out the current calendar for club nights and no club nights). Dropoff and pickup procedures will be the same (parents drop off their children at 6:15pm at the right side parking lot entrance and pick them up at 7:30pm). Once you have registered, I will be emailing more details on how the nights will run.

We are happy to be able to offer Cubbies (ages 3.5 up to Kindergarten), Sparks (Kindergarten through the second grade) and T&Ts (3rd grade through the 6th grade) this year. We are unsure yet if we are able to offer a program for our Puggles (ages 2 - 3.5) but I will keep this forum updated on that progress. Please fill out a registration form and call or email me if you have any questions! We can’t wait to get started!

Update May 21, 2021. Thank you so much for a wonderful Awana year! Our End-of-Year Survey is now live. Please help us improve our program by taking the survey. As always, contact us for any questions, concerns, recommended improvement areas, or for anything else we might be able to help you with! Have a Blessed Summer!

Update May 8, 2021. Hard to believe the year is almost over! I’m so proud of our volunteers, our clubbers, and our families for how hard they have worked this year. It was certainly different and it was certainly challenging, but we made it through and I feel we did a great job. Our last club night is Friday, May 21st. Although it won’t look anything like the last club night we have enjoyed for years, we are going to try to make it special for our clubbers. Thank you to everyone who has supported our program through these difficult times. God is so good!

Update March 10, 2021. The Awana year is well under way and we are making progress making disciples! If you have missed any lessons or just want to check them out, you can visit our CLUB RESOURCES Page and click on any week’s lesson. All Zoom sessions are recorded and uploaded to this page the next day.

Easter is right around the corner and we are already working on the Easter Story! On Friday, March 26th (our last Awana before Easter because there is no club on Good Friday), we will be offering your children a special adventure in the form of a pajama movie night on the big screen! We will be showing the Easter Story from the SuperBook series off of RightNow Media.

Due to lack of resources, we are still unable to offer a Puggles or Cubbies program for your 2-up to Kindergarten children. We are so very sorry but hope to pick back up where we left off in the new Awana year (beginning in September 2021).

Update December 7, 2020. Happy Holidays! To celebrate this joyous season, we are planning a few special extras. Next week (Dec 11th), we will be doing a special Christmas craft and writing Christmas cards to children confined in hospitals this Christmas. The following week (Dec 18th), we are inviting our children to share a special Christmas message with us in their Holiday pajamas or clothes. We will all come together in the gym the last half of the evening for a fun, socially-distanced game of Holiday Pictionary! They will leave that night with a special treat.

For both weeks, we are having a non-perishable food drive for our local pantries. Every child that brings an item in to place under our Food Drive Tree will be given a special treat at the end of the night. Thank you so much for your support!

Update November 4, 2020. With this webpage being new, I would greatly appreciate any feedback you have that will make it better. It is there for you and only works if you use it. I welcome any and all comments.

After a series of meetings with my leaders, we believe we have created safer and more friendly arrival and departure procedures. So this is how we would like it to go. Please ask your child to use the restroom before arriving. While the restrooms will be available, this will help minimize surfaces touched. Between 6:15pm and 6:25pm, parents/guardians will drive up to the gym door (facing the church from the parking lot, it is the door on the right). We will always use this door for dropoff and pickup. Please stay in your car as you wait your turn to drop off. When you pull up, you will be met by a leader, who will take each child's temperature and ensure he/she has a mask on. If a mask is forgotten, we will have disposable ones ready for them to use. Once your child has been confirmed to have a temperature (taken with a touchless forehead thermometer) below 100.4 (per CDC guidelines), he/she will be asked to proceed directly to the gym or large classroom. Upon entering the building, each child will be asked to use the provided hand sanitizer. Another leader will be there to hold the doors open to minimize surfaces touched. Which room they go into will swap every week, so we are ready to direct them to the appropriate room where they will remain for the full hour.

At 7:30pm, all children will be lined up in the hallway appropriately spaced. At that time, you can form a line in your car at the same door and either hold up a sign with your child's name or yell the name out and a leader will escort the child out to you.

We felt these procedures best because it allows for surfaces to be minimally touched and it allows you and your child(ren) to stay in your car where it is toasty warm (and so the cold doesn't adversely affect the temperature being taken). It also allows us to ensure no potentially sick child enters the building and to ensure no congestion forms in the entryways.

Club uniforms are encouraged but not required. If you would like to purchase a uniform, you can do so using the Order Form. Financial assistance is available. Just let me know ☺️.

Friendly reminder: per our COVID policy, if the child or any family member staying in the same household should test positive for COVID, we ask that you let us know right away. At that point we will contact everyone to let you know which club was affected. I will do this via text so you get the information right away.

We will always try to have a Zoom session for each club every club night. If you are remote only, or for any reason you chose to switch to remote only or just can't make the in-person on a given night, just click on the Zoom session between 6:15pm and 6:25pm. The club night will start at 6:30pm, but the earlier logon will allow the kids to introduce themselves or just say hi to their friends for a few minutes. Click HERE-SPARKS to start the weekly Zoom club session for Sparks using the password ‘sparks’. Click HERE-T&Ts to start the weekly Zoom club session for T&Ts using the password ‘t&t’. These are recurring meetings, so the links and passwords remain the same every week.

Update October 24, 2020. We will begin club for the Sparks and T&Ts on Friday, November 6, 2020. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer club for Puggles or Cubbies at this time but will do so when we feel we can do it safely. Club will be held every Friday night from 6:30pm-7:30pm. Parents/Guardians will be asked to drop their child at the door and not enter with them. The door will be labeled red for Sparks and green for T&T if you forget which door it is (it changes every week). I will ask you to drop your clubbers off between 6:15 and 6:25 so we can ensure we have the full hour to do what we want to do. It is not a lot of time to accomplish all we need to, so arriving on time is very important.

On the first Friday, Sparks will enter through the door nearest the large classroom. Sitting in the parking lot looking at the church, it is the door on the left. One of our leaders will meet them with mask and gloves on and a thermometer in hand. They will take the kids’ temps, offer a mask if they don’t have one on, and ask them to proceed directly to the large classroom. They will stay there the entire evening and attendance will be taken once everyone arrives. No snacks will be provided at this time. If you could please ensure your child(ren) have used the bathroom before arriving, it will greatly help us limit the contact areas. In the large classroom, they will have group and activity/craft time. At 7:30pm, children will be escorted outside for parent/guardian pickup at the same door they came in.

On that same Friday, T&T’s will be dropped off at the entrance closest to the gym. Sitting in the parking lot looking at the church, it is the door on the right. Same deal there. One of our leaders will be inside the door to offer masks and take a temp. Clubbers will be asked to proceed directly to the gym where they will have group time and a socially-distanced game. Attendance will be taken when everyone is there and at 7:30pm they are escorted outside through the same door for parent/guardian pickup.

The next Friday, they switch. Sparks will go to the gym so they can do group time and socially-distanced games, and T&Ts will go to the large classroom to have an opportunity to do group time and an activity or craft.

Notice I mentioned masks and socially-distanced protocols. Per our church protocols, masks will be required to be worn the entire time we are in the building and the areas children will be in will be sanitized and configured for socially-distanced activities. The webpage has a button for our COVID/sick policy, and this will be required to be read and agreed to in order to register. When you register, a link will take you to that portion of the page for your convenience.

Please be patient with us as we figure out how to offer your child(ren) the best and safest club experience this year. Things may change weekly depending on how it goes and what we feel we can change to make it better.

Update October 16, 2020. An email will go out to the parents soon to communicate how the weekly in-person and remote clubs will be run. At that time, parents will be asked to review our COVID policy and register each child for club beginning Friday, November 6, 2020. Please check out the rest of the webpage for important information, such as our club calendar, the parent handbook, order form, our photo gallery, or for how to contact us.

To recap here, we will offer both in-person and remote clubs every Friday from 6:30pm - 7:30pm for Sparks and T&T only. At this time, we are unable to safety accommodate Puggles or Cubbies but hope to some time soon. All Sparks will enter the church through one entrance, get their temperature taken, and proceed directly to either the large classroom or gym. All T&Ts will enter the church through the other entrance, get their temperature taken, and proceed directly to the large classroom or gym. Both church entrances will be labeled with which club should enter because it will switch every week. Switching the entrances each week allows both clubs to have an opportunity to do large classroom crafts and activities twice a month and socially-distanced games in the gym twice a month. All children will remain in the same room the entire hour. A Zoom session will be offered in each club for the whole night so those children desiring the remote option will have the opportunity to participate at the same time. All Zoom sessions will be posted to this website on the Club Resources page in case you missed it or would like to review.

Masks will be required! When it is safe to do so and we are properly socially distanced, leaders may allow the kids to remove their masks for a short time. Snacks are not provided and the water fountain is not available, so we ask that your child arrives with their own labeled water bottle.

Update October 12, 2020. Awana announced this week that we will begin our club on Friday, November 6, 2020. We are so excited to see the children in-person and share our love of God. There are a lot of unknowns at this point, so please be flexible and bear with us as we figure out the best and safest way to return to the church for in-person club nights. Stay tuned to this page for updates.