Day 1- I made the wall look like stone and flax drying, but I left room behind to put the kids when the guard comes in. I'll just tweek the script to fit. We are the church that had a lice problem last year. Ick! So no sheets for me thankyou.

Day 3- I think I'll hang a painted canvas that looks like city walls to march around and let it fall at the right time. We have some very high strung kids, and they get pretty rowdy at times. I think I'll suggest the human pyramid to the games person if she has extra time. I know the kids would think it was very cool. And it would be a lot safer outside on the grass. Yeah I'm getiing excited. 2 and 1/2 weeks away! janna

Let Your Light Shine
  

Well Good Luck

Miss Mary (in the Bible room) 

We finished Day 2 last night. I haven't posted pictures yet, but I believe they had plenty of time to reset up before the next rotation. Remember the kids have to put their shoes back on and they did that outside our WBA room. Tonight is Day 3 and we are doing the "human stacks"-our room is carpeted.

             

Theresa in Fl

For those that have done Day 4, how did the balloon thing go for you all?  My station leader had trouble getting the tarp off the balloons most of the night, so that didn't go real smooth. Did anyone else have trouble with this?

I'm thinking maybe the tarp we used was too heavy.

             

Theresa in Fl

We just finished a great week.  We read posts on the board that were helpful as we were planning and I thought I would post what worked for us.  We were lucky to have 2 adults and 2 youth helpers to run the station, and we have 6 rotations of kids come through - from K to 6th. 

We used one of the walls we had built for last year's VBS covered with  painted drop cloths (from past years) every day. 

Day 1:  Some of the Kindergarteners and first graders were a little too scared by hiding under the sheets and they didn't quite get the concept that the spies were good altho we said it - the older kids (we go up to 5/6) got it and liked it.  I wish that for the younger kids we had had the spies help the kids hide in a fun way as someone else suggested.  We didn't use the CD for any of the groups as it seemed too scary.  We gave soldier lines to the youth helpers to get them involved.

Day 2:  We covered a ladder with a dropcloth and used clamps to clamp the blue sheet - one side to the ladder the other side to the wall.  One youth helper was behind the ladder and the other behind the wall.  We used a small fan to blow at the bottom of the sheet and it looked like the river was flowing - too cool.  But we really needed our two helpers behind the scenes to part it.  One helper unplugged and pulled the fan, unclamped the sheet, and the other helper pulled the sheet from her side.  This didn't take long to set back up. 

We were worried about kids slipping on the towels, so we used on of the blue sheets wrapped around a piece of foam.  This was duct taped to a tarp.  This worked really well for us - it is kind of squishy as well as wet.  We have 200+ kids go through and really need something secure that will hold up. 

Day 3:  We had the older kids (3rd-6th) make pyraminds (we have carpet) but for the younger kids we had them kneel and hold up their hands.  This worked well as their arms got tired.  We had them just collapse (bow down) on their own.  We used the fatigue idea and the kids loved it.  We borrowed fatigues and got Dollar store hats.  We used a whistle for the Colonel and it was a good attention getter. 

Day 4: The balloons were hard to reveal and nobody seemed to care about the balloons - I think if there were a way to secure them with a string or something and make them appear mysteriously it might be worth it - or think of some other celebration type thing to happen.  But since we already have a campfire and glow sticks on that day we probably didn't need them.  At first we forgot to tell the kids to be quiet as they were getting the glow stick from their leader.  It is much more effective if the kids are quiet. 

Day 5:  The onions worked pretty well - but not 100%.  I think a few kids used the oniony paper towel to wipe their hands after the water/spoon treatment and the smell came back.  We switched to having them dip in water and wipe with the wipe at the same time - that way the paper towels are saved for later.  We used scrub tops and it was very nice to have a clip board as by day 5 it was hard to remember those lines!  The kids really liked the spontaneous arm twirling disease. 

Hope everyone has a super VBS this year!  Yours in Christ - JuliaM

While water doesn't usually rise up from the ground, doing so does show depth and the walls are pretty cool.

For supplies, I found blue material at Wal-Mart that was slightly flawed for $1.00 a yard.  They also had some fish material that looks like a tropical sea.  I'm running that along the bottom edge of the two walls of water so it looks as if there are fish swimming.  A local party store had a tablecloth in the "football/sports" section that looks like green grass, so I'm using that for the lush side.

Our VBS is July 23.  I'm getting excited!