Growing Up Wild Missions Curriculum

Storytime! Growing up I would carefully go through the CBD catalog and pick out books and DVDs I wanted for Christmas, and then I’d wait to see what my Mom picked out of the various items I’d found. One year when my kids were little, she handed them a CBD catalog and asked them to pick out some things they’d like, and they picked a variety of things, and she gave them each a DVD which I could turn into Bible lessons, or that was my theory.

Story Continues, but I need to add in a few things:

(This post is sponsored by Wild Brothers Productions, I need to say it now because I’m about to start linking to their stuff that we bought, and I should tell you this before I link)

One of the boys picked this truly atrocious dinosaur detective video with a man wearing this truly horrible dinosaur costume. I quickly accidentally lost that video. The Artist picked out a video version of a picture book she loved, and we watched that a fair amount. But, the highlight was a Wild Brothers DVD that was the perfect length for what I needed.

At the time, we would watch 1 show for lunch. The requirement was it had to be educational, and it had to be something I would tolerate.

I like Wild Brothers Production videos

They’re fun, we learn at just the right pace, and each episode ends with suggestions of how to take it beyond watching. It gives you some Bible study ideas, then it gives you a science idea, and some nature study ideas.

We turned each episode into a nice little mini-unit.

Here’s an example of what we would do (not exactly, but I’m using footage from their YouTube channel)

We’d find out about this cool new animal, a dingiso. In the episode, it’s just them seeing it in the wild or, in this case, their house.

Aren’t you incredibly jealous they just had this right outside their house?

Also, because of watching Growing Up Wild, I now know this is a new species discovered in 1994. How cool is it that we are still finding new creatures?

And, I want one now, this is so incredibly adorable.

FOCUS TICIA

I would do a quick search to see if I could find more information on the animal, and in this day and age you can almost always guarantee you will. Just remember to preview the video, there is no need to repeat my accidentally showing my preschoolers a video of a very drunk naked Australian man jumping like a kangaroo.

Though, I would stop the video above around 3 minutes because it starts getting into a bit more detail than you probably really want your kids to hear about their reproductive systems.

I still remember how horrible that was 10 years later.

Then we would have an activity with it, in the case of the tree kangaroos, I’d have them try to jump and climb like them.

There is no picture because my kids now are not willing to let me film or take pictures of activities like that. They have opinions, and I’m trying to respect that.

This is what I like about these videos, they lead to rabbit trails as we find interesting things.

But, the biggest thing is just seeing life of a missionary. We have several friends who’ve become missionaries, but this is a completely different type. This is going out, learning a new language and working with a completely unreached people group and learning their culture.

It’s a great example of what missions should look like. You can tell the Wild family’s love of the people they are interacting with and their culture, they are both learning from each other.

But wait, there’s more!

Now each DVD of Growing Up Wild (save yourself money and just buy the set) comes with an activity DVD to put into your CD ROM drive and print off the guide.

Side-point, I like to print things like this off as a booklet.

Sometimes, you need the extra space and print it full size, but I like to save paper and print it this way.

My favorite part about the guides for each DVD are the freedom they give you. They start off by saying tweak and adapt it to your group, and there are activities for several ages.

Just the first activity from DVD 4 could become a whole week-long science lesson. It starts off reading Psalm 104 and then heads into comparing Creationism and Evolution, which truthfully can be a whole semester study just for that.

But, I appreciate what they’re saying, do your research and decide for yourself.

Continuing on to more of the mission curriculum activities

As I said, these become a whole unit study with their new activities, there are nature study ideas with charts!

I like charts.

This is actually where they’re talking about culture, which gets into geography and social studies. This is comparing your home and life with the Wano culture. I really appreciate how each episode you learn a little bit about the culture of the people they’re interacting with.

I forget just which episode it was, but in one episode they went on a hike and were cooking at the end of it, and they started painting each other with the ashes. As I was watching it struck me how we always assume any sort of facial paint is ceremonial and has special meaning. However, in this instance it was literally we’re bored and this seemed like a fun thing to do. I don’t know why it struck me as so interesting in the moment, but it did.

I love those little details of their episodes, it’s clear the Wild family loves the area they’re living in and seeing so much of God’s creation. They love the people they’re interacting with and meeting different people groups. They’ve got a new video out, Island of the Four Kings, that looks fascinating to watch.

The visuals are amazing

Not too surprisingly, but the visuals are amazing. The picture up above is a still they’re letting me use for the post, and it’s gorgeous to see.

Sorry, quick intermission as I was looking for an example video on their YouTube Channel, I found out they have a video of swimming with manta rays. Batman loves manta rays, I’m not sure why, but he does, so when he’s home from work I’m going to show this to him.

Also, they have clearly grown up quite a lot from the earlier videos.

What are you waiting for? Pick up your own copy!

While you can pick up just one DVD, I’d recommend buying the whole first season. If I had a way, I would totally use this in a Sunday School class.