Promise Inn

Promise Inn is a space designed to provide various experiences with a wide variety of backgrounds for telling the biblical stories.  As the children enter an old Inn, the view outside the windows might allow them to watch the pyramids being built in Egypt, or Paul’s trip on the road to Damascus.  This is our primary Art Room, but we have the flexibility to use this room for story telling and science workshops as well.  Here children will learn through the intelligences of verbal-linguistic, spatial, logical-mathematical and intrapersonal.

 Camp Promise

Camp Promise is designed to transport children to the world of the nomad in the desert.  They may sit around a campfire outside a tent hearing God’s word as the Hebrews would have in the oral tradition.  Perhaps maps will cover the entire floor and the children can “walk” through Jerusalem just like John.  Perhaps they will chart Paul’s travels or pinpoint locations of New Testament miracles.  The related intelligences are spatial, linguistic-verbal, logical-mathematic, intrapersonal and musical.

Promise Garden

Promise Garden is designed to provide various backdrops for telling Bible stories.  When it is completed, there will be wheat fields, vineyards, olive groves and other artistic renderings of biblically appropriate garden settings.  In this room God’s stories will come alive as the children experience a biblical character relating an important parable or event.  The related intelligences taught here are linguistic-verbal, spatial, logical-mathematical, intrapersonal and musical.

Port Promise

Port Promise is designed to look like the deck of an ancient ship.  Here it will be possible for the children to experience God’s word through story telling, art and science.  The multiple intelligences taught here are spatial, linguistic-verbal, intrapersonal and logical-mathematical.

Promise Temple

Promise Temple is designed to replicate an ancient Roman Temple.  It is a space where the children will experience God’s word through puppetry, drama or movement.  The corresponding intelligences being taught here are bodily-kinesthetic, linguistic-verbal and musical.

Multi-Intelligence Theory

   Educational researchers and theorists now know that people possess multi intelligences (sometimes called “learning styles”) which need to be engaged in order for the truth of God’s Word to be more fully known.  It is more than just “active learning” and “being creative”.  It is a holistic, intentional understanding of the way children truly learn.  According to the work done by Howard Gardner, educational research professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education, each person possesses seven “intelligences”.  They are:

·        Linguistic-Verbal – the capacity to use words effectively, orally or in writing.

·        Logical-Mathematical – the capacity to use numbers effectively and to reason well.

·        Spatial – the ability to perceive the visual-spatial world accurately and to perform transformations upon those perceptions.

·        Bodily-Kinesthetic – the capacity to use one’s whole body to express ideas and feeling and the facility to use one’s hands to produce or transform things.

·        Musical – the capacity to perceive, discriminate, transform and express musical forms.

·        Interpersonal/relational – the ability to perceive and make distinctions in the moods, intentions, motivations and feelings of other people.  Sensitivity to facial expressions, voice and gestures.

·        Intrapersonal/introspective – the ability to act adaptively on the basis of self –knowledge.  Being aware of one’s inner moods, intentions, motivations and a capacity for self-understanding.