VBS Decorations

A teacher friend of mine did a poster like this at the beginning of school one year on her classroom door. Besides the normal school supplies that the students are asked to bring in, she made a "Helping Hands" poster and put things that she needed for the room such as electric pencil sharpeners, parent volunteers to read books, construction paper, etc. I thought that was a WONDERFUL idea and as I was brainstorming things to use for decorations, her poster came to mind.

After watching the decorator's video that came with the VBS curriculum, I made a list of the things the video suggested and things I thought of, and made this poster below. I placed it in the Sunday School hallway at church and asked our members to look for things they had at home and would be willing to donate, let us borrow, or even items they would be willing to purchase for us. The poster was a big hit and a great way to let the members of our church know things we needed and ways they could help. We had several people that didn't feel "comfortable" working with the kids and directly VBS donate many of the items on our poster. I felt that was a great way to try and get everyone involved in one way or another.

As people saw an item or two they were willing to donate, I asked that they pull the hand off the poster to take home as a reminder. This also helped to ensure we didn't get 25 donations of dowel rods and no paint. :)

Here is the VBS supply bucket where people placed their donations. Our theme this year was "Crocodile Dock" - like a swamp in the south.

We had a work day the Saturday before our VBS started to take things down off of the sanctuary "stage" and prepare the stage, walls, and church hallways for our swamp. Here are a few before pictures...

And here are our after pictures...

This was the room that Sarah (our teacher) used each night. She did a great job and turned her room into whatever she needed it to be each night to coordinate with the story. This particular evening her room was the Red Sea that Moses crossed.

Here is our hallway through the church. It us supposed to look like the sides are lined with swampy trees and spanish moss. On the floor we had an old pool cover that was "swamp water"...or the color of it anyways. :)

This is the sanctuary. We had many people help with supply donations and their time for decorating. If you know me, or maybe have picked this up from some of my postings, I am very anal and like things done a particular way. I am the kind of person that knows how I want something done and would just assume do it all myself, even if that means LOTS of extra time.

I am very proud of myself (not to brag) for being able to have "jobs" for people to do and to delegate the many decorations that needed to be done. There were many willing people and I knew it was necessary to use the help that God supplied me (and our church) with. The only thing that I really did, with the help of Ben, was the painted backdrop standing on the stage. Volunteers did the rest and it all turned out wonderful!

For our backdrop, we used 4 pieces of 4x8 ft styrofoam sheets that were 2 inches thick. A contract supplier that my mom works with donated the sheets. I need to print this picture and send him a HUGE thank you card! We saved the sheets and figured we could prime and paint over them atleast once more for next year's VBS as well.

I am so thankful to EVERYONE that did show up to help decorate and/or tear down the decorations for VBS. The church would not have looked so swampy without everyone's help!