God's Creation Theme

5/1/2014

Our first year of making our DIY VBS, we decided on creation. Below is information on how we did it.

2014 VBS team at Bethel, AK

Lesson Inspiration

Genesis 1- 2:3

Schedule- 5 day VBS

Music – 15 min
Arts and crafts-20-30 min
Music- 5 min/Nature Nugget*
Lesson- 30 min
Snack- 5 min (as leaving)

Total Time: 1 hour and 30 minutes

*Nature Nugget was a short segment in which we shared about something God created on that day of creation, for example a lion on the day when we talked about animals.

Lessons

Day #1: Creation Day 1 &2- Light & Darkness/Water (Genesis 1:1-8)
Day #2: Creation Day 3- Plants/Land (Genesis 1:9-13)
Day #3: Creation Day 4- Moon & Stars (Genesis 1:14-18)
Day #4: Creation Day 5&6- Birds& Fish/ Animals & Man (Genesis 1:20-31)
Day #5: Creation Day 7- Sabbath (Genesis 2:1-3)

We presented these straight from the bible text and explained what God created each day. After that we had the kids come up front and add a decoration for that. More that in decorations section below.

Memory Verse

Genesis 1:1
"In the beginning God created
the heavens and the earth." NIV

Registration

Registration Table

We kept it real simple this year at registration. We had name tags to give out. We took down names and emergency contact information. In later VBS' we added a better contact form.

Crafts

Day #1: Coloring Activity Plate wheel/representing light and darkness

We used supplies we had on hand from our children's department at church, with some exceptions like the popsicle stick animals.

These are just suggestion, creative minds will come up with endless possibilities to use.

It goes to show you that even with basic crafts the kids still have lots of fun.

Day #3- Moon plate cutouts

Day #2- Cotton ball flowers

Day #4- Popsicle stick animals or paper bag animals

Day #5- Bookmarks

Music

Song Service

Theme song: This the day

As you can see here, this particular year all we had was a mandolin player and one person to help with singing. But it was still fun!

Tip: Make up hand motions for the kids to the theme song.

Goodie bags and snacks

We found out the first year how helpful having a goodie bag can be. One of things we like to do at the end of our time at night is to ask questions about the lesson and any kid that answers gets a prize. Well, as you can imagine we sometimes have more kids than prizes and giving goodies bags is one way everyone goes home with something.

The bags themselves aren't anything fancy, just paper bags sometimes decorated (in the picture we happened to have a fancy bag). We add in little things like pencils, erasers, small toys, and a kids reading activity.

Snacks:
For snacks this year we used fish shaped and bear shaped crackers.

Sorting out trinkets for goodie bags

Decoration

We did progressive decoration this year. It was a lot more work than any of the other decoration we've done since. While not as extensive in decorating, it did require us to add decorations every night. This meant that we had to have decorations to represent each day of creation ready to be put up each evening for example: stars and planets for creation day 4. The progressive decoration gave a nice effect in the end so that the kids could see the earth void at the beginning and after of our 7 creation days now full of life. We had the kids help us each night after the lesson put up something.

Day #1 Prior to kids adding decoration

Creation Day 1 &2: Light & Darkness/ Water

Creation Day 3- Plants/Land

Creation Day 4- Moon & Stars

Creation Day 7

Decoration for Creation day 7

Day #1- We used a black sheet to represent the empty earth. Then we added at the end of the night "water"
Day #2- We added land and plants to the backdrop, note we did have the kids who wanted to share their craft cottonball flowers for decoration add them to the background
Day #3- We added planets to the background
Day #4- We had several cut out animals for the kids to put up
Day #5- We had mini crosses that went up to represent the Sabbath

Ta-Dah! A DIY Creation Themed VBS!

We hope this has inspired you to try your own version of a DIY Creation themed VBS. We had a lot fun and learned much about new things to try in other themes. Feel free to copy what you see here if you like and enjoy!

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DIY
Vacation Bible School

In 2014 the Wrangell VBS team was formed. What began as a mission trip to a remote location on a recommendation of a friend, has become a yearly event. We have done a VBS in the following locations in Alaska: Bethel, Craig, Ketchikan, and Wrangell.

This blog is intended to share some of the things that we have learned in creating our own VBS themes over the years. #1 it doesn't require a fancy package. #2 it is not a hard as you think #3 it can be a lot of fun.

So we hope you enjoy our themes. You might even be inspired to DIY your own VBS. Feel free to use the materials/themes here to create you own VBS program.

Brooke, Wrangell VBS Team Leader.