This year the theme for VBS at our church in Mera was "The Soldier of God." The curriculum paired a Bible story with each piece of the armor of God talked about in Ephesians. For example, the story of Esther, who God used to save the Jews from genocide, was associated with the helmet of salvation. We were in charge of the crafts. It was a challenge to find things that were unique, appealed to the whole age range (Pre-K to 7th grade) and were economical. With a little help from the Internet and Oriental Trading Company, I think we pulled it off. The first day we made helmets out of strips of paper, decorated by the kids, then attached a mouth piece. Our boys participated in their own classes, for the most part. Isaac went with Josiah so he had a buddy and Nathan preferred helping with the crafts. Samuel was in the oldest class.
The second day we decorated slap bracelets with Bible verses to remind us of belt of truth (and forgot the camera.) Turns out we could have done that for the Sword of the Spirit because the boys at least, quickly used their bracelets as swords. The kids really enjoyed this and many were still wearing their bracelets at the end of the week. Next up was "Shoes of the Gospel." Rather than try to figure out how to make shoes, we decorated cross necklaces to remind us of the Gospel.
On Thursday we made "Shields of Faith" from foam sheets, stickers and markers.
We used the shorter activity time of the last day to do scratch art. Oriental Trading Company has a whole set of Armor of God scratch art shapes. Some kids scraped off all the black so only the underlying color remained and others scratched designs. This is a favorite craft and several folks remembered doing something similar four years ago. The week concluded with a final program. We were proud of all of our boys for going up with their classes and participating in the songs. Samuel even got a special award for his hard work memorizing Bible verses in Spanish. The only thing that made us sad is that we won't be here next year to participate again.
