When the kitchen table starts looking like this, it can only mean one thing. Vacation Bible School week is nearly here!
I volunteered to head up the crafts, figuring I can get creative with my stash of supplies.
Many fancy VBS packages offer pre-made craft kits, but our curriculum is a little more low-tech. I'm glad. Honestly, so many of those VBS goodies that come from places like Oriental Trading Company just end up in landfills anyway.
These are not meant to be treasured keepsakes. They are just meant to reinforce the message of the day's Bible story.
Day one: wise men seek Jesus. Making crowns out of paper plates and using rhinestone and foamie stickers to decorate. Any suggestions on how to make these more sparkly without glitter? Looking for something that dries quickly and won't be too messy. Glittery markers, maybe?
I'm also going to let them smell these essential oils of myrrh and frankincense, just to add some context.
Day two: friends lower their paralytic friend through the roof to receive healing from Jesus. Simple! Band aids in the shape of a cross, and yarn "stitching" along the frame.
I plan on sharing photos of when my little boys needed "healing". Kids love to share their boo boo stories.
Day three: Jesus feeds the 5000. Making baskets using paper plates and filling with a fish and a loaf of bread. Simple coloring, cutting and gluing project. Using broken crayons to rub on a basket weave pattern.
Day four: Jesus dies on the cross, and rises again on Easter morning. I made these embossed cards using a Taylored Expressions embossing folder. I'm going to let the kids watercolor to make it look like stained glass.
Day Five: The Road to Emmaus
Making bookmarks with maps, some rubber stamped feet, and the saying "Walk with Jesus". I was so happy to find a big atlas for $3 at Goodwill. Paper maps are hard to find these days.
I'm going to have some bonus crafts on hand, like beaded friendship pins and mosaic stars, just in case we finish a craft quickly. Older kids may be quicker than the littles. I have just 20 minutes with each group before they move on to the next session.
Lots of prep work this week! Cutting, punching, shopping, assembling. We don't have a huge turnout, maybe around 50 kids.
I haven't done a lot with Christian education in recent years, so this is my way of tiptoeing back into it. It's funny. When my own kids were young, I was knee deep in this kind of thing every day. I spent six or seven years working as a preschool teacher, too. But now I'm rusty. I can't even tell you the popular cartoons on television. Bluey, maybe?
Wish me luck!
Ah, I remember these days, too, from when my girls were little lol! I ran the crafts at a week-long, overnight family church camp here in PA called Cherry Run Camp Meeting. My minivan was stuffed to the gills with our personal items plus boxes of craft supplies. Church members gave me tubs of buttons, bags of toilet paper tubes, stacks of paper plates, etc. and I scoured the internet and library books to get ideas. It was SO much fun and I got to know the kids well. They would drop by the craft area outside of the scheduled craft times just to talk and see if I had extra supplies they could "free-style" create with - of course I did!
ReplyDeleteYour crafts will be a hit! Glitter ideas for the crown - can you punch or die-cut shapes from glitter paper that the kids can glue on to add sparkle? Glitter markers sound good, too (I didn't know those existed!). Please do a follow-up blog post letting us know how the VBS week went!