Tips for Vacation Bible School
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Are you in charge of Vacation Bible School? If so, 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 popular VBS themes. Please leave a comment below if you find this resource helpful.
Planning Your Church VBS
Your first task is to make a plan. Read about my 9 easy steps for planning VBS for a simple how-to process. This will give you a big picture of all the important tasks. If you need more help, I recommend this website. It’s a little out of date, but has some helpful information.
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. I’ve written an article to help you choose a VBS theme. Here are links to the popular publishers.
- Group Publishing – non-denominational VBS publisher
- LifeWay – Southern Baptist curriculum
- Cokesbury – still a popular choice
- Standard – vacation bible school
- Gospel Light - 2 different VBS themes
- for more see my 2009 VBS theme reviews
- upcoming Vacation Bible School curriculum for 2010
For more practical help, browse these article categories about vacation Bible school on our site: VBS 2008 | VBS 2009 | VBS 2010 | VBS Ideas
Vacation Bible School Budget
Many churches are concerned about tight budgets and this is affecting their summer Bible school programs. I’ve written an article with some practical ideas 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
- Tips for VBS crafts
- sample VBS follow-up letter
- Tips to find Spanish Language and KJV curriculum for VBS
- For a definition of Vacation Bible School, including a brief history, check out this page on Wikipedia.
How was your VBS? Take this simple survey to let us know!
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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 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.
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.