For most churches, June is the month for their annual vacation Bible school. I’d like to hear your best tips for VBS. Leave your best Bible school ideas in the comment section below.
- What does your church do that really seems to work?
- How do you save time or money?
- What do you do to make VBS an event to remember?
- What are some fresh ideas for Bible school?
Need More Help? You can find even more practical ideas on my Vacation Bible School resource page and my Vacation Bible School crafts page.
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{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
We using the book and film Facing Your / The Giant as our theme. The workbook was a major resource. Additionally, we our young adult and adult classes viewed the film and held a discussion. Finally, the last day, we held a balloon release with message inside — the giants in our lives! Weeks later we recieved letters of response from persons that found our messages worldwide!
Robin,
I would be interested in to know some more about what you did. We are starting an after school program at our church for the children in the community. It will have kid from preschool to 5th. The ballon release sounds wonderful… Anything you can tell me will be helpful.. I really I new at all this.
We had difficulty finding skit actors this year, so our youth group is taking on the project of creating and videotaping the skits that will be shown each night. This gives the high-school age kids an opportunity to get involved and serve, as well as meeting a need and solving a problem.
Amity Aliceas last blog post..VBS 2008
When I began a new job this year as a Director of Religious Education in a Catholic parish, I felt that my situation was different from many churches. VBS in general was not really designed with our denomination in mind, and in fact many local churches using the canned programs are deliberately “targeting” our children because they consider them “unsaved.” Even a lot of packages sold as “Catholic” are really modified versions of something that was designed from a Protestant perspective.
For us, the Bible is of course very important, but is understood within the context of Tradition as a whole. The program at my parish also is not intended primarily as outreach to unchurched families, but as an enrichment for children already being raised in the Catholic faith. I wasn’t sure that a commercial curriculum designed from a “sola scriptura” point of view for the purposes of outreach could be made appropriate for our kids.
I decided to re-define our summer children’s program, and I designed one from scratch. I gave it a different name with the word “Catholic” in the title, and broadened the focus from Bible stories alone to a specific aspect of Catholic life, with Bible passages used as illustrations. This year, the focus was on the seasons of the liturgical year, with a different season every day. Each Bible story was one that they would hear at Catholic liturgy during that season.
The kids had fun, and I came away feeling it was much more consistent than the canned programs with what we try to teach our children all year. It sure was a lot of work, but I intend to keep doing homegrown programs for the foreseeable future. I recommend to any VBS director, whatever your denomination, to take seriously the option of a “do it yourself” program. If you feel for whatever reason that the available packages do not quite meet your needs, see if you can do better!
I have helped with VBS for several years in different churches in different capacities. I was disappointed with the way things were done the last couple years at our current church, and have become much more involved as a result.
I wrote our whole VBS program this year. I am a former Elementary school teacher who has also taught HS English, and am now a stay-at-home mom. I felt like the Lord was prompting me to do this, and it was definitely a challenge! We saved well over $300 and were able to ear mark that money for our first Friday night carnival.
We tried a new concept this year. Each class had crafts for two days and games for two days for longer periods of time. The fifth day was our carnival – complete with carnival food, bounce house, carnival games, prizes, candy, and a dunk tank (modified).
Our craft this year was a CD Clock. I found a site that sells clock works for about $2 each if you buy 50 or more. We used old CDs and painted and decorated them. The children were amazed that they were taking home a craft that was so “cool”; it actually worked!, and I was happy my son brought home a craft that wasn’t going to end up in the trash. I used a small supplemental craft I found at Oriental Trading for the smaller children when they finished decorating their clocks.
I planned out great games this year, as opposed to getting out a box of balls and other sports equipment and letting the kids run wild.
We simplified the snacks and the kids loved them just as much as the elaborate ones in the past. Any leftovers were saved for the carnival.
We used some kids’ music that I collected from different sources.
My husband took pictures all week and we had our slide show Sunday night for the closing program. We pulled out the cotton candy machine and popcorn machine and made more goodies after church for everyone.
I was able to go off on vacation afterwards with the knowledge that we had 6 children who made professions of faith as a result of all our hard work. I have a couple months to convince my husband that I can do it again!
@Robin Jefferson: Using the movie as the VBS theme sounds like a very creative idea. I’m surprised I haven’t hear of more churches trying that direction.
@Amity Alicea: I love to hear about getting the youth involved in VBS. I can still remember helping with VBS when I was a teenage. Looking back, it was one experience that God use to eventually get me serving in children’s minister as an adult.
@ Trish O.: I’m glad you came by and shared your experience. It sounds like you’ve made the best of the situation and created something that was very meaningful for your church.
@Tammy W.: Thanks for sharing your awesome comments. I really like the way you got involved to help make VBS better for the kids. It sounds like you tried some creative changes to the schedule and saw some great results. Thanks for the tips.
Dear Brother,
I am Fahim Qaiser from Pakistan. I have studied your web site, and I found it the most wonderful site to get right to the True Word of God. My suggestion for you is to create your material in my language of Urdu and Punjabi also. It will bring lots of blessings of the Word of God for the Pakistani and Indian Urdu and Punjabi speaking people. For that purpose I as a translator will bring your material into Urdu languages and into Punjabi language as well. Although it will take your low expenses as well, as fund for the Word of God to reach out to the deserving people. I my self, work on a local radio station also. Many times it becomes difficult for us to keep doing this because of being minorities and because of the lack of the financial resources. I will wait for your response.
Sincerely,
Fahim Qaiser ( Pakistan ).
Using the internet, you can find many resources to supplement solid Bible teaching for VBS.
We use Children Desiring God curriculum that only has the Bible stories and applications for only $80 (http://www.childrendesiringgod.org/vbs.php). We choose a theme to go along with the one provided by Children Desiring God. For example: for “Things Hidden: An Evangelistic Study for Children on Kingdom Parables” ( http://www.childrendesiringgod.org/curricula.php?id=18&grouping=Backyard_Bible_Club_VBS) we chose to do a jungle/treasure hunt/safari theme. It works great! Then, we create our own simple crafts by looking online at different craft websites, we create our own decorations according to the theme and using the different artistic talents in our church, we choose songs from different Children’s CDs or songs from other VBS publishers, we create our own games thanks to a gifted tennis teacher at our church, and we have the congregation donate cookies for our snacks. Very simple, very easy… just involves a lot of delegating.
This year our church has created a VBS Core Team, putting different parents in charge of the different areas of VBS (crafts, games, decorations, teaching, publicity, etc). They will all work together to organize and plan VBS. This brings so many ideas to the table and the church won’t have to pay a full-time director to lead it.
Heather,
Great suggestions and thanks for sharing the links to Children’s Desiring God!
Also check out this VBS planning time line:
http://www.iheartchildren.com/2009/04/time-line-for-vbs.html
Our decorations for our VBS are made by using a transparancy and an overhead Projector. We called a local printing company and asked if they would save us their end of rolls of printing paper. They don’t use the roll to the end. Most will give it to you free, while some might charge a nominal fee. You can make any picture a transparancy using a copy maching. The decorations can be as big or as small as you like. During the months before our VBS we would outline pictures (using overhead) and then one Saturday we would call on the congregation to come and help us paint or color in the pictures. Great day of fellowship and a chance for everybody to have a hand in helping to get ready. Great Fun.
I need some ideas on food for VBS this year
you might find some good snack ideas on one of the VBS forums