EmailI’ve been looking for VBS decorating ideas and wanted to share what I’ve found so far. I wanted to get maximum wow, but not make the decorations a big hassle. Plus our church didn’t have too much money for Bible school theme decoration this summer.
The best place to get fresh ideas is on popular Vacation Bible School forums. Each of the following websites have many thousands of active users who share ideas about VBS. These links will take you directly to the decorating sections. Some forums may require free registration, but it is well worth the time.
- Outrigger Island and Cactus Canyon can be found on the LifeWay VBS forum site.
- Crocodile Dock and Avalanche Ranch and Rome VBS Decorating ideas can be found on the very active Vacation Bible School forums from Group Publishing.
- Son Rock decoration ideas are available on the Gospel Light VBS forum site.
- Studio Go decorating tips can be found on the Standard Publishing forum site for VBS.
Do you know about another place to find vacation bible school decorating ideas? Then leave a comment blow, we would love to add more ideas to this list.
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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We are in the process of decorating for a beach theme. We are blessed with a very talented parishioner who has drawn all sorts of beach cut-outs on cardboard. We are also blessed with helpful volunteers who are willing to paint the cut-outs. We were able to purchase some beach related VBS items from last year on clearance. We also sent an email out to our school families asking for beach related items. Last we we salvaged several decorations from another church’s VBS program (swamp theme) for our rainforest theme; this year we’re able to make some minor modifications on some of them for our beach theme. I’m happy with the way our decorations are turning out. We spent very little on the items, but have had a lot of volunteer help putting them together.
I’m in charge of decorating the room where the skits will be ..(also doing them) Thanks for the idea about the boat. Where do you get scene setters?? Do you have pictures of the finished prodect. How did you make the ships wheel?
Group’s High Seas Expedition has an exciting DVD “Decorating Places”, which demonstrates how to build a Ship. To cut costs, we’re using large appliance cardboard boxes instead of foam as they do. After painting the large sheets of cardboard with a base coat, we found that narrow cut notches in a sqeegee applies paint lightly to look like woodgrain. We’re doing the same to make walls and give them a weathered-look. The mast is made of a cardboard tube from a long roll of carpet, and the ship’s wheel of wood. Decorative ends for each spoke of the ship’s wheel can be found any place that sells wood products, as Lowes or Home Depot.
We purchased ‘scene setters’ for our walls to look like ocean; then made our own cardboard fishes of many sizes and shapes… painted in array of bright colors and designs.
Spyglasses for the Preschoolers were made of toilet tissue cardboard rolls, covered inside and out with contrasting bright color paper. The sheets of paper are measured to the size of the roll, then cut and glued along the seam and inside both ends. The kids get to decorate them with nautical stickers or color their own designs, then play like sailors on the high seas!
We used a template to cut out ‘ships’ from poster board, then filled in details with a fine-tip Sharpie. Preschoolers love to color them with washable markers.
One of our volunteers made the iron-on transfers for t-shirts herself to reduce costs.