Crafts for VBS~OutBack Adventure!

For us, VBS (we call it SummerQuest) has come and gone. Ours was the first week in June. It was a great week for us! Our theme was chosen from Lifeway's Boomerang Express.

For the past 3 years (I think) I have been craft director. A 'mega church' does not always mean 'mega budget' and we do have a few $$ to spend and we like to look for items that the children will enjoy making and not be trashed as soon as they walk out the door. SummerQuest is also for 1st - 6th grade. And additional challenge to find the right craft for the older children/tweens. And we had plenty of them this year!

Kits from the Craft houses are great, but expensive. Some children can complete them in 5 minutes and you still have to entertain them for 15 + minutes. If we find a craft that works, we will use it 2-3 years in a row. Some crafts we alternate. Some we try to work with the theme.

Lifeway had a great idea with the Praise Bells. We did use that one for both the 1st & 2nd graders this year.

Aborigine Praise Bells

We chose one craft per grade and a filler if needed.
To make this craft last 2 - 25 minutes tracks
we had them paint the outside of the pots the first day.

The next time their grade came to the craft track, we had them add the ribbon and bells.

We used primary colors. The Aborgine Praise Bells turned out very nice.
I think few found their way to the trash.
Also a little tip, we tried to make sure everyone wrote their name & Bible Study Room # on the INSIDE of the pot just in case the mom wanted to display or keep it for a keepsake.

This turned out to be a very nice inexpensive craft. Hobby Lobby had the pots on sale for 1/2 and I ordered 500 of them to cover 2 grades and VBS for a mission action project that our church does in North Birmingham. We had plenty of money left to spend on ribbon including enough to cover the N.B'ham project. We used twine for the jingle bells. If we were to do something similar again, we would use a yarn or a softer string.

Tomorrow I will post about our Kocoa the Koala Bear Witnessing Puppet the 3rd graders made.