Practical Help for Vacation Bible School
Vacation Bible School is typically a summer ministry event sponsored by Protestant Churches. In many churches it takes the form of a day camp, often including games, crafts, bible lessons, and other activities. Vacation Bible School is often abbreviated by the initials VBS. Christian education publishers create new themed material for each VBS season. Churches in turn, decorate their facilities to fit the theme. Many churches think of this summer Bible School as an outreach event and spare little expense. For a brief history of Vacation Bible School, check out this page on Wikipedia.
Are you looking for help planning your church’s VBS? Then keep reading this page to find practical articles and VBS theme reviews for the upcoming year. This page will make your church VBS easier to plan. Every article listed below is full of practical help. You’ll even find independent reviews of popularVBS themes. Please leave a comment below if you find this resource helpful.
Planning Your Church VBS
Your first task is to make a plan. At this point you must make several key decisions that will effect the outcome of your Bible school. These choices include the budget, dates, time table, time of day, and curriculum choices. I’ve written and in-depth article to help you get started. Read Nine Steps for Planning VBS for a simple how-to process. This will give you a big picture of all the important tasks.
Choosing The Right VBS Curriculum
The next major task is picking which theme you will use. I suggest you do this as soon as possible because many publishers give early-bird discounts. Choosing the right theme for your church can be complicated. To get you started, I’ve written an article titled How To Choose a Bible School Theme. You can also check out my video about picking a VBS theme.
Despite the name, picking the right curriculum is no vacation. It takes careful thinking about the needs of your church and the resources you have on hand. My method is to compare all the best offerings from the top publishers and list pros and cons for my specific church context. You can read my reviews of 2010 VBS themes to continue your research. Some churches make use of used or outdated VBS material. If you are interested, you can browse my older reviews from 2008 and 2009. Don’t miss our coverage of the 2011 Vacation Bible School themes
Vacation Bible School Budget
Many churches are concerned about tight budgets and this is affecting their summer Bible school programs.
First read 10 reasons why VBS still matters and then check out our guide for doing VBS on a small budget.
Even More Practical Help
Here are a few more articles that might help you plan Vacation Bible School.
- How to find volunteers for VBS. Hint: It might not be as hard as you think.
- Often churches debate about when to do Vacation Bible School. Here is our article discussing the pros & cons of Night versus Morning VBS Schedule.
- Kids love playing VBS games. Here are some simple suggestions for Vacation Bible School Games.
- Tips for Bible School Crafts
- sample VBS follow-up letter
- Read these 4 essential tasks for after VBS, you might not be done yet!
- Tips to find Spanish Language and KJV curriculum for VBS
- Ideas for a Baseball themed VBS
- VBS idea for an Army Theme
- Vacation Bible School Forums
- Chick-Fil-A and VBS
- Vacation Bible School Decorations?
- Bible School Trends & Reflection
- Printable forms for VBS evaluation
- Game idea for Vacation Bible School
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I have just discovered your website and have found it very informative. Do you have any ideas on how to locate “old” VBS materials. I have a great kit which our church bought and never used called Lighthouse Kids- Shining Gods Light, which I thought would be great to use on our N. Calif coastline this summer. However, I am unable to find any resources (additional product) for it. Any ideas? Thank you for your webpage
Thanks for reading. I’ve heard you can find some old material on Ebay.com or directly from the publishers.
I hoping you can help me out. I viewed your site, but I didn’t see the theme I was hoping to find. I am looking for a VBS theme for Hawaii, Do you have material for this type of theme? I saw this theme last year in one of the VBS catelogs. My church did the Beach Party theme last year. We purchased a lot of material for the beach theme and we wanted to use some of the material again for this years theme. You’re help would be greatly appreciated.
Tammie Kuhn
VBS Director
Wacissa Penticostal Holiness Church
(850) 997-4577
I see your church did the “Beach Party” by Cokesbury (I believe it was in 2008) do you have ANY materials left, please contact me. I would love to see what you have and possibly buy some or borrow it. I am VBS Director of my church and I am having a hard time locating materials from this VBS program.
Thank you in advance for your help.
Tammie, Do you have any of the extras that went with Beach Party? I’m trying to possibly locate the Student Take-Home CD-ROM, and The Adventure Video for Assembly Time. Oriental Trading Company has a lots of beach type and Hawaiin themed stuff in their catalog.. you can also access them online. They are pretty reasonable, and sell in quantity.
I too am looking for additional materials for “Lighthouse Kids – Shining God’s Light” VBS. I just spoke with Cokesbury and they don’t keep VBS supplies around for that long. So, if any one has and old 2003 VBS materials (Lighthouse Kids) they would be willing to share, I would very much appreciate it. God be with you. Sharon.
I am looking for Lighhouse for kids music CD, can you help me find one?
I have the Lighthouse music on CD… I am not sure how this web site works – but perhaps I could arrange to get it to you. I am in California.
Wow! What a useful website! Thank you for putting it together for us. Maybe you can give some help with my problem. I work in our church library. We are open during Bible school, supply story tellers and audio visual equipment and we kick off our summer reading program with
VBS using the same theme (or an adaptation of it.) I understand that many of my colleagues in other churches do the same. If would be so helpful if we could purchase a summer reading program kit with the same theme as VBS. It could even include a little booklet with insructions on how to do a summer reading program for those who haven’t tried it before. Just some bookmarks and themed paper that could be used for running off a reading log or summer reading club rules would be helpful. Posters would be fantastic. Do any of the vendors you list offer such a product. I know that two of them do not. Thanks for your help.
Tony,
Have you seen Group’s theme this year on ROME: The Underground Church? We are doing it and I am in the role of the Apostle Paul. Just wondering what your overall thoughts were on the curriculum.
I didn’t take a very close look at it, but let me see if I can put together a post on it.
We did Rome in our church (attended by about 50+ kids). It was a huge hit with both the adults and the kids. The Marketplace idea was great, although you have to make sure to have your family leaders keep the group together (or you may have a few wandering kids). We did the animal sacrifice shop and had all kinds of things from duck, goats, rabbits, guinea pigs, and more! The kids loved this. I would be happy to talk more about this if you have any questions or want any tips. Find me on my website: growingkidsministry.com or email me lindseyrwhitney@hotmail.com!
Can you identify which VBS programs are available in a Catholic version. I have used Group’s for 9 years now, and I love it, but I still like to check other themes out and need to know if they are available in a Catholic version.
Thanks, you have a very informative site.
Ligouri carries a Catholic version of Gospel Light VBS programs!
I am looking for Groups Bethlehem Village Holy Land Adventure VBS materials…..Can anyone help me?
Thanks..
I am looking for VBS materials related to ‘Abide in His Love’ theme. If you have some kindly let me know.
Thanks
I am looking for VBS materials related to ‘Abide in His Love’ Theme. If you have some kindly let me know.
Thanking you
I am looking for a music cd from a construction theme VBS done a few years ago. Also would like to track down the song (on a cd) called, “Kids Under Construction” Thanks for any help you can give.
This Web-site is a great idea!
In His service
I’m not sure about the song you are looking for, but I just downloaded a construction theme song from KidTunz.com. Maybe that will fit! Also, sometimes you can find stuff like that on Amazon.com under MP3.
construction zone is the name of the vbs. try christian book store online
Please do send me the VBS lesson which was entitled ARMOR OF GOD. I was able to download the teachers manual but I failed to download the kids activities. thanks for all the lessons posted. they’re really very helpful in relaying clearly the messages of the bible. god bless!
Our church has been blessed to receive a lot of the materials for the Beach Party VBS theme. One thing that I desperately need, though, is the music CD for the songs. Does anyone have one that I can buy? Thank you.
I have the CD. I can copy it and send it to you if you would like. I am doing the same theme. Where did you get materials? I bought the starter kit, but I am unable to find any additional materials.
We are interested in a one day VBS this year. Do you have any suggestions that would help?
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