Vacation Bible School Crafts: Day 4

We're past the middle of the week and the end is in site. Catch up on the happenings earlier in the week on days one, two, and three.

Day 4: Rest and Regroup

The team

The crafts endeavor for VBS was not a one-woman show, by any means. I had help. In fact, I think trying to accomplish all the crafts solo would have ended disastrously. Our VBS program was run by two women, one of them a friend of mine. The co-directors were an organized team and were super-helpful to me and the crafts team with whatever we needed. They even brought snacks down to us! I also had a collection of volunteers and family who helped prepare and stage the crafts and who helped get the rooms set up. And, finally, there were the volunteers who operated each craft room (mentioned below). I'm thankful to have had the help I did. It made the week far less stressful that it could have been.

The set-up

The fourth day of VBS was the day the children went to daily Mass. As such, the schedule didn’t have room for crafts that day so my team and I had a little break in the crafting action. This was our day to regroup and get everything ready for Friday’s dismissal. With this little breather, here is the set up crafts ran with:

Crafts were held in three multipurpose-type rooms, typically used for classrooms and meeting space. Each room had few tables, about 3’ by 6’ sized and arranged together in a tight rectangle. As crafting space goes, it was great. We had plenty of room for each group to have a little elbow room between kids. Storage in the room for completed crafts or staged materials for crafts wasn’t as abundant. Fortunately, we had access to a fourth room where we could store the completed crafts.

To save us angst when clean up time came around, the tables were covered with heavy brown craft paper. This gave us a surface we wouldn’t be afraid to get glue or paint on and provided a blank slate for crafting. We encouraged the kids to color on the tables if they finished their crafts early.

Day to day

VBS classes were arranged by age group. Each group, over the course of the morning, would rotate through one of the craft rooms. They always went to the same craft room each day. Over the course of the week, we got to know the kids a little and they got to know us as well. Each of the craft rooms was run typically by one adult volunteer and one teen volunteer. For the most part I had the same group of volunteers—tremendously helpful for maintaining some consistency. It didn’t take long for each room to develop it’s own characteristics and vibe. The day’s flow started with setting out the supplies for that day’s activities, running through the activity with the children, collecting and storing the completed crafts, cleaning up, and doing it all over aging for the next group.

To do

Thursday was different. Thursday was our day to get a jump start on clean up and dismissal. Crafts went home with the kids on Friday, when VBS was over. Our major tasks for Thursday included getting the crafts sorted into the bags they were going home in and doing triage when necessary. Popsicle boats that weren’t glued securely enough or glued too securely and treasure chests painted shut were the main culprits that needed tending to. Photos taken on Monday of each of the students also arrived and needed to go into their corresponding treasure chests as well.

Day four really wasn’t all that restful. Nonetheless, we definitely welcomed the breather. Stay tuned for day five and the culmination of VBS crafts.

Vacation Bible School Crafts: Day 2

This is the second post in my VBS week series. Catch up on day one's activities and an overview of the week.

Day 2: Escape to the Island

Another directive for crafts I received was to do something to draw down the supply of popsicle sticks in our VBS inventory. Apparently the popsicle stick collection grew over time as leftovers from previous years’ crafts were put back into storage. There are some great popsicle stick crafts out there. Unfortunately, most of them aren’t easily attempted by young children in that 20 minute time frame. Because of time and safety, I couldn’t do crafts that required cutting the popsicle sticks, so we were stuck with the rounded ends. What I ended up going with was the classic popsicle stick boat:

The boat’s base is a row of sticks laid side by side. Two sticks are glued in place along opposite edges, perpendicular to the initial row of sticks. The sides of the boat can be built up by overlapping sticks, much like building a house with Lincoln Logs. The mast is a stirrer straw held in place by a spool glued to the boat’s bottom. The sail is a square of canvas that could be colored with markers and had two holes to thread it on to the mast.

I modified the craft for different age groups. The youngest children created their boats using the fat popsicle sticks or tongue depressors. Their boats weren’t much more than a square platform:

Z's fat popsicle boat

The middle age range—about 1st through 3rd graders—created the same design, but with the standard-sized popsicle sticks. They were also given the opportunity to build taller sides to their boats:

Skinny stick square boat

The older kids had a trickier design. Their boats were diamond-shaped instead of square shaped. Popsicle sticks for the base were laid down and offset a little, resulting in a parallelogram or diamond shape. They could also build the sides up as high as they preferred.

C's diamond boat with bowsprit and crossbeam

In the end, I think we ended up with more popsicle sticks than we started with (the irony was that in order to draw down the stash in crafts, I had to buy more in order to complete the stash). In the end, we donated the extras to the preschool at our church.

Craft storage after day 2

Day three is coming up next.

God’s Little Makers: A Week of Vacation Bible School Crafts

Last week was a busy week of making. During the summer, our church holds a week-long vacation bible school (VBS) camp for parish children. The kids enjoyed a range of activities during the week, all centered around our faith. My particular role in all this is crafts lead. I designed, planned, and led the week’s crafts activities for the kids—for the second year in a row. It was a rewarding experience, and definitely challenging. Coming up with four crafts for 120+ kids ranging in age from preschool to 6th grade isn’t the easiest thing to tackle. My goal was to design crafts that were fun and interesting to a wide age range, able to hit a wide skill-set range, and still tie into VBS theme and message. Here’s what I came up with, starting with day one:

Day 1: God’s Treasures

Our VBS theme this year was “SonTreasure”. The theme was centered around idea of tropical island fun. The message and focus of the week was God’s love for us. One of the requirements I had was one of the crafts had to incorporate the children’s photos. I found these little treasure chests at Michael’s Arts and Crafts and they became the basis for the first craft.

Treasure chests lined up and ready for crafting.

I cleaned out the supplies at two Michael’s stores, one of them more than once, looking for all of these boxes. This was the first craft I had a clear idea on. The kids decorated their chests. First with paints:

Sample chests--testing out the craft with my 5yo.

and later they added acrylic gems as time allowed.

Adding gems

Finished!

Waiting for the trip home.

Before the kids took their crafts home at the end of the week, we added the photos to the chests to remind the kids that they are God’s own treasure.

Stay tuned. Days two through five to follow.

Too Much Stuff?

My sewing room went unused a good deal of time between the Christmas holidays and now. Whenever that happens, things tend to get out of hand. Stuff gets piled up on any available surface, Other stuff doesn't get put away. It's just a big mess. You know how it goes.
With summer vacation approaching--along with a desperate need for summer clothes--it was time to start cleaning up. That's been the task of the last few days. I had everything almost all put away and my sewing table all cleared off.

Except it wasn't really cleaned up. I was just moving piles of stuff from one location to another. The situation went downhill when I needed to clear a path to the laundry room to make way for a new dryer (yay!). Going further into the rabbit hole was the notion of 'organizing' the stuff. A bookshelf removed from the basement was moved into my sewing room. That set off the problem of what to put on it and how it should all be arranged.

I'm not sure if it's possible to have too many craft or sewing supplies. I think, though, that I am getting pretty close to finding out what those limits are. It's clear I need to start drawing down the stash by restricting or abstaining from new purchases until I've used what I already have. That will the main focus for projects over the next few months, until the new school year rolls around in September. Then we'll see where we are.

Here's to a fruitful, stash-busting summer!

(But first, I gotta get that table cleared off again.)