Vacation Bible School Craft Ideas Anyone ?

With my daughters class they actually purchased cake toppers from a craft store, glued them to the bottom of an empty baby food container and made a type of "snow globe". There was a tree and woman (eve) in the center and they were able to find fruit confetti to place in it. Not quite sure what the fluid mixture is, but I believe U can use vegetable oil. They hot glue gunned the top on. My daughter LOVES it. My son has also dropped it several times and it hasn't broken. I've also seen this done with a small plastic water bottle.
Can U possibly do spone painting as well? There are all kinds of shapes U can purchase at the craft store. I've seen all kinds of fruits and animals that can be done on plain construction paper.
Oriental trading company also has religios stickers in their easter catalog, perhaps they are now on sale via their website??
Best of luck to U.

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Hello, I am currently running our toddler nursery (18-24 mos) and we are doing several crafts with the kids. One of our lessons is "Jesus lives" so last night we had the kids color flower pots with washable markers so on Friday for this lesson we can plant live seeds and the kids can watch them grow from home. This might be a fit and it can be an easy project. Another lesson we are doing is Jesus being crucified so we are doing egg carton crosses since they are soft and safe. For the story on Cain and Able, I would have the kids make a picture frame out of construction paper and ask the parents in advance of that day to allow the kids to bring a picture of them and a family member (just in case there are only children in the class without any siblings). the story on eve eating the fruit, I would make round sugar cookies and have the kids icing them with colored icing pretending they were apples or oranges (maybe have orange and red icing) or I would have actual fruit and let the kids make a face on it before eating it. Depending on your budget for these things and how many kids are in the class, for the Special day of rest, I would either purchase white towels from the dollar store or have the kids bring in a light colored towel and I would get some puffy paint or fabric paint and have them decorate it as a blanket to signify rest. Or if need be some variation of this might work. I hope this has given you some ideas or sparked some of your own creativity.

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Hi J.,
Just a few ideas that came to me as I read your post.
1. How about planting a seed in a decorated cup/can/etc, for the creation part? My son did a cool grass seed project where you decorate with markers then fill a white tube sock halfway with dirt and then add grass seed. Tie a knot, place upside down in a clear plastic cup and water. The grass started to sprout in about a week. They were called Seed Buddies and the kids at my son's party really liked them.
2. You could use felt rectangles and fold in half and whipstitch with yarn to make little "beds" for "day of rest".
3. Do caramel apples for the eve/apple day.
4. go to: http://www.dltk-bible.com/mabel.htm and there are instructions for a toilet-paper tube shepherd there. Lots of other bible crafts there as well.
Hope this helps! Good luck to you and your class!

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these aren't stellar ideas by any means but might give you some ideas.

For Day 3 With Eve--You could cut picture of foods that might tempt the kids from grocery ads for the kids to glue on to paper. you could cut an apple in half dip it it paint and use it like a stamp to make an apple print.

hmmm what about for god creating everything --- if you let them play with playdoh creating anything they wanted and then gave them a ball of green dough the size of a ping pong ball or so and then a ball of blue that was three times the size of that and mix them together to make the earth. It should have a marble look like the land and water.

I'm kind of stuck on the other days. I'm sure you could do an internet search.
Good general craft ideas for this age would be
the self adhesive foam cut outs the kids can peel the back off and stick them right on paper or other fun foam.
in general gluing anything with a litte supervison.
coloring with crayons or markers

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I am the 'craft lady' this wek at our Bible School!! For crafts we are making 'walking sticks' we purchased 6' long bamboo sticks at Home Depot in packs of 6 for about $2 a pck. We bought a plastic table cloth and cut it into strips to tape to the top of stick to be streamers. We then had the kids put glue on small sqaures of tissue paper, and wrap those around the stick. After the glue dried, we ainted the tissue paper with Modge Podge to make it shiny and so it wi last. The kids loved that.
An easy one we are doing is colecting 'nature items' (made by God) and gluing them to a styrofoam plate,we add a hole at the top and a piece of ribbon so it can be hung up.
We printed out pictures and are usig colred sand (I bought it at Michaels, inexpensive and a little bit of it goes a LONG way.
a site with great ideas, print outs etc is www.dltk-kids.com
Good Luck!!

Hi J., What a great thing to help the little ones see Jesus through crafts. Do you have a budget to work with? For creation, cut out pictures of animals and plants from old magazines--4 or 5 per child, and let them use glue sticks to adhere them to cheap white paper plates. For God resting--take small food boxes (poptarts, mac 'n cheese....) and cover them with colored constuction paper. Then let the little ones glue on cotton balls for a pillow, and have small cloth scraps cut in squares that they can put on the bed for a "blanket". Hope that helps....

I don't have much experience with this, but for Eve and the apple, what about creating different apple snacks, making them "enticing" to others. Another idea for the creation is planting things in plastic cups maybe creating animals with cotton balls or other objects. Hope you get some good ideas!

Hi J.! Preschool age is the best and they can actually do quite a lot when it comes to crafty things. I worked at a daycare for about 6 yrs total and I always found that collages are a great thing to do with this age. You could go through magazines at your house and cut out pictures of different things in nature, people, animals, ect. and have them pick and choose what they would like to put on their poster(paper). This could be for God creating everything. Just an idea for that one...maybe for Eve and the fruit have them draw a picture of they might think that would look like.Try to get them to do as much as possible, they are eager to try and learn. They are little sponges.Have a blast!! What a great thing to be a part of:) leah

Preschoolers just like having fun, so don't worry too much that the craft has to be totally about the story. I work as an aide in a preschool and the kids have the most fun with the process, not always what they wind up with.
Bubble painting is alot of fun. Mix some dish soap, temper paint and water in a small dish with high sides (like a margarine container). Have them blow slowly with a straw and make bubbles. (practice blowing out first, so they don't suck it in :-) Then you can help them touch a piece of paper to the bubbles and the color will stick. We did this with 2 or 3 different colors, adding one color to the paper at a time, and it came out great.
The story with the apple, you could do fruit printing. Cut apple or pear in half. Put alittle paint on a paper plate. Dip fruit in paint and then stamp on paper. Don't use too much paint.
Kids like making collages. Put a bunch of stuff in the center of the table. Buttons, scraps of fabric, ribbons, foam pices etc. Give each child a paint brush and small cup of glue and a piece of construction paper and let them go. Can also use pictures from magazines of all of God's creations for your first story day.
Hope this helps some.

The first day is easy ! Make a mobile, and hang something made on each day, a shape that is white or yellow on one side and black on the other(light and darkness), clouds and waves(sky and sea), desert on one side, flowers on the other(land and garden), then God starts filling in what he created each day, Sun, moon and stars on Day 4 (corresponds with Day 1), fish and birds on Day 5 (sky and sea), and then animals and humans. You'll have to prepare in advance, but the kids could hae the materials and sting it together in class.

Resting is tough. But maybe you could do something VERY active, then "rest" and have a snack afterward, and talk about how good it feels to cool off, and to relax. And see what they can do while they rest. Can they talk to each other? can they hold hands? Could they hug each other if they wanted to? Be sure to emphasize that when God is "resting", He can still listen to us, talk to us. You want to be sure they don't think he falls asleep on his day off and forgets us. (they are pre-schoolers !! :-) ) maybe you could do a craft based on things we can do while we rest. ?? Or can they make a pillow ? A small one, with fiberfill? You could cut old pillowcases, give them fabric paint to color them, and then you could sew them up at home afterwards. Or, if you have enough, or can gather others, you could have them simply color pillow cases, that they can use on their pillows at home. hand prints are fun for Mom and Dad to remember, and you could add the words, "God loves Tommy" (or Jane, or whomever. You could have the words there first, --paint them on in a smile shape, and then you could paint their hands and stamp them on above the smiley. Pracice at home, to be sure it works, and have fun washing up. (You could bring a dishpan with slightly soapy water into the room, if the bathroom is far away, and lots of paper towels -- also bring a friend to assist.)

Day 3: Remember when Eve ate the fruit that Adam did, too. Women aren't the only sinners, even if Eve screwed up first.
You also want to talk about God's love for them while they were sinners, because God loves us as sinners. Maybe you could make stick people out of clothespins, and put clothes on them ? The woman figure could have a shawl on her head. (You might have to make the faces ahead of time, as pre-school aged kids may not be able to make anything that small)

Day 4: I have a problem with this. You've talked about God's creativity, that he rests, and then that people sinned. And the curriculum ENDS on Cain killing Abel ? This is the last day some of these kids (the unchurched ones) will show up, and you are ending with a story of death? I guess I'd toss the curriculum that day and talk about God's love and how he didn't want people to live without him forever. So he came back to earth, as a person who was both human and divine, to live with us and show us how much he loves us. And maybe make a rainbow. It's not as if you studied Adam and Eve, but you can tie in the rainbow after a storm with "stormy" times when Adam and Even sinned and left the garden, with God coming into our loves and showing us he loves us. And you can talk about ways of showing love, how do Mom and Dad show love, how can they show love to people, and then make a picture of people showing love. You can come up with a picture by using construction paper and cutting out silouettes of a picture of people showing love. Then cover it (both sides) with clear contact paper, and the kid has a placemat. (If the church has a laminator, that's even better, but when I did this with kids, one person was a school teacher, and she laminated them at school.)

Good luck ! Pre-school kids are fun, and lively, and while you have to have enough to keep them busy, they can't do intricate crafts. Be sure to be ina room with toys, so if someone finsihes early, he or she can play rather than disrupt everyone else !! :-)

I have taught vacation bible school for 17 years and little people are so simple they just want something. one idea is fun foam make a rainbow of different color for then to hang on there door at home, another is cross with fun foam, big bead necklace for mom to show how we all the color belong together which will stand for difference color people.
sandraf

Foam craft kits from Oriental Trading (check out their website) has very inexpensive crafts for little ones that are religious based. My son's school uses them quite often and they are easy and cute!
Good Luck

Strangely, I was just in Pat Catans and saw a section of religious crafts and I thought, "hum that must be for vacation bible schools". They had all kinds of things to do like little wooden cut outs to paint. You should check it out.