EmailFor 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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After several years of very expensive, and most unfulfilling VBS sessions, I proposed that we “get back to the basics” of VBS by discontinuing the purchase of the VBS packets (which are very expensive). Last year, we (me, my two co-leaders and our pastor) wrote our own cirricuilium. We had adult members of our church become characters out of the bible. We built a huge 10 ft. bible and the characters stepped out of the pages of the bible each night to tell their bible story. Our theme was “Living Waters of the World” and our bible stories were centered around “water” in the bible, i.e Peter casting his net out and drawing in huge quantites of fish, Moses being saved from death as an infant by being placed in a basket in the river, etc. We accepted monetary donations each night and ear-marked the funds for building clean water systems in 3rd world countries. This year, our theme was “Feed My People”. Our bible stories were centered around “food” in the bible, i.e. Jesus feeding the 5000, Manna from heaven, etc. We accepted donations of non-perishable food items to present to our food pantry. We exceeded our initial goal and reached our 2nd goal. We have always prepared a meal each night to make it easier on the parents to get their kids to VBS. This year our meals consisted mostly of foods that were eaten back in biblical days. For instance, our meal for the night that the bible story was about manna (a pancake like item), we served pancakes and sausage.
Getting back to the basics has surely worked for my small church.
I couldn’t believe your post because I was just thinking the same thing! The “kit” VBSs are expensive and want you to buy so many other pieces. I think it has become more theme driven than content. Many years ago my Church wrote our own curriculum and will do so again.
Looking for input from anyone that has had a “night” time VBS. Many of our working parents have commented that if we held VBS at night – it would be feasible for their children to attend. We usually have it from 9:00 am to noon. Any thoughts?
Here’s a recent post that might help
night or day vbs?
Our church does theirs in the evening. We start around 5:00 by serving a small supper (sandwiches, hot dogs, etc). VBS starts at 6:00 and goes until 8:00. The supper idea really helps people get there, I mean, who doesn’t want another night where they don’t have to cook?
We set up a photo booth last year (first time) in the crafts room.
first i will explain the set up:
Place a large, solid colored sheet on a wall and pushpin it so that it is not wrinkled and will not fall down. Place a card board sign above the sheet that reads “_____ Photo booth” our theme was polar express so i would have put “Polar Photobooth”, this years theme is a rain forest theme so i will probably have a sign that says “Froggy Photobooth” or “forested photobooth” or something similar. use a test subject to see how far from the wall they need to stand so that they don’t cast too much of a shadow (try to avoid using a flash camera, if your camera blurs the photo when you don’t use flash then you may want to get a tripod.) and mark the floor with masking tape so you can show the kids where to stand.
If you have windows in the room where you are setting up the photo booth then try to position it near the window so that it is off to the side. natural light looks really nice and is good for people who will be using a typical digital camera and works even better for people with a dslr (but that do not own or can not set up off camera flashes).
did i mention: avoid flashes at all costs! Flashes both on and off camera seem to scare children more than the cameras themselves.
I was in charge of crafts and had no problem getting pictures of all the children in all of the groups. everyday i took pics of the new children that were not there the first day and i kept telling the children that on the second to last day we were doing a photo frame and then on the last day after they had dried they would get to take it home with the photo from the photo booth in it. oddly enough we saw more kids come back for the final day than in previous years (though it may have been coincidence).
Another thing you could do is assign someone the job of photographer. if you know of someone who can take pretty good pictures and whom knows how to use a camera this may be the perfect job for them! especially if they are normally are a floater and haven’t found “their place” yet in the churches vbs. This is a great job for anyone, the only requirement really is taking good pictures and knowing how to use windows movie maker and owning some christian cds. It doesn’t matter if the person is an introvert or extrovert.
All this person has to do is roam around taking pictures of the kids: eating snack, praying, reading, listening, playing games, singing, ect. the hard part is trying to make sure they get all the groups and at least one picture of each kid (its ok if its only on pic and the kid is in a group of other kids, it looks a lot better to the parent when they see only one photo of their kid in a group rather than one photo of thier kid all by themselves. ) they can start working on thier “project” as soon as they want to, but i usually start around tuesday and try to have everything done by wednesday so all that i have to do is make a few adjustments on thursday and save the movie to a flashdrive.
the project part is pretty basic: add all the pictures you took to the wmm import media folder. weed out the really aweful ones (blurry, ooops i used flash and now that kid has a twin ghost, he blinked (though i have seen a few cute blinky photos from some kids), ect.), then set your project to when dropping photos in they automatically (under tools –> options) are set to only show up for about 2 seconds. i know it sounds really short but it will keep the kids and their parents attention. next highlight all the photos you kept and drag/drop them into the time line. if you know have 20 minutes of video you may want to go back a weed out some more until you have no more than 10 minutes but no less than 3-5 minutes. they find a song, or two, that is up beat and peppy (doesn’t have to be a children song, for example i usually use charlie hall’s music (similar to casting crowns) and add it to the timeline. and then publish movie once you’ve tweaked it and have it the way you want it. yep. easiest thing i’ve ever done… well… maybe not. but the reward is worth the frustration.
I love the photo booth becuase it gives me a chance to get at least one good picture of all the kids that they can take home for their parents. and not only do i man the photo booth and am leader of the crafts (only usually have one helper) but i am also that “floater” that takes the pictures for the end of the week movie. yeah. now THATS a tough job! on occasion some of the other leaders and teachers will remember to bring their camera and take pics for me of their groups, which i very appreciatively use (as long as said pictures don’t get weeded out).
I was stunned at how the church people reacted the first time i did the end of the week movie. I had adults in tears! seriously! church members were thanking me for weeks and telling me that the kids were counting how many of the pictures they were in and all sorts of stuff. Every time i come home from college for breaks i have kids from the church run up to me asking if i’m going to make another movie (I started doing them for the awanas end of the year awards night as well as for vbs).
If none of this convinces you that one or both of these things are an awesome activity to try at your church to make you vbs (or awanas) more memorable then try this one: a few weeks ago we had a parent call the church and say that they remember getting a photo from vbs and wanted to know if we had a digital version of it that they could have. the secretary said she would check with her daughter (me) and then asked why, they said thier daughter had passed away from meningitis a few weeks prior. she was a kindergartner. I did not know the family very well and the only comfort i could bring them was in finding a dozen pictures that their daughter was in outside of the one from the photo booth. Thank the Lord I had not accidentally deleted any of the photos! I would have felt terrible!
so I’d like other people to learn from that and i strongly encourage you to try to incorporate photography somewhere in your Vbs or even awanas.
Ashley the hobbyist photographer.
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