Running VBS with a paper sign-in sheet and a binder full of registration forms is manageable for thirty kids. It stops being manageable at 120 when you have four different class levels, half the children arriving on a church van and the other half being dropped off individually, and someone needs to know by 8:30 whether the Thompson twins are both here because their parents are emergency contacts for each other and there's been a family situation.
The Safety Layer
Emergency Contact and Emergency Phone are the fields that exist for the one time in a summer program when they're not optional. Separated from the parent contact — Parent's Name, Phone, and Email — the emergency contact handles the scenario where the parent can't be reached. Notes is where the child's specific safety considerations get flagged: the allergy that wasn't on the registration form, the custody arrangement that affects who can pick up, the child who gets overwhelmed in loud group settings and needs to leave activities early.
Photo is the visual identification layer. Volunteers who work with 90 children across a five-day program, some of them covering different class groups on different days, can't be expected to identify every registered child by name on day two. A photo in the registration record, queryable by class, is how you confirm you have the right child before releasing them to the right adult.
Transportation determines the end-of-day process. A child with a parent pickup and a child on the church van have different dismissal workflows. Filtering by Transportation at 3:45 PM gives the dismissal coordinator two separate lists — one for parent pickup staging and one for van loading — rather than requiring an announcement-based sort of 90 children in real time.
Attendance as the Daily Record
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are the attendance fields that turn the registration database into the weekly operational record. Daily check-in against the registered list identifies children who are registered but absent — which triggers the parent contact protocol before the end of the morning session — and provides the count for snack and materials preparation. By Friday, the complete attendance record for each child is in the registration record without any separate tallying.
Class and Age together handle the placement. Class assignment might not exactly follow age if siblings are placed together, if a child has developmental considerations that put them with a different age group, or if class sizes need balancing. Having both fields means the assignment can be documented as distinct from the age-based default.
Guest of handles the word-of-mouth registration pattern common in VBS programs — children who come because a friend invited them. The referring family is tracked, which matters both for follow-up communication if the guest child expresses interest in the church's regular programs and for understanding how the program is spreading through the community.
Zip with Street Address is the geographic data that shapes next year's outreach. If 40% of registered children are from a two-square-mile area that isn't the neighborhood immediately around the church, that's information about where publicity is landing and where resources for pickup logistics are concentrated.