Craft Ideas for S.C.U.B.A. VBS

Super Cool Undersea Bible Adventure- www.groupvbs.com

Crafts on this site:

1. Sea shell paper weight craft
2. Stuffed fish fish craft , Sea Star craft and Sea Horse craft
3. Fish Puppet craft
4. Pop Bottle Goldfish craft
5. L'oreal Goldfish craft
6. No Mess Sand Art craft
7. Fishin a Fish Bowl craft
8. Changeable Fish in Water craft
9. Fish in Water Sponge Painting craft
10. Fish in Water Paper Plate craft
11. Paper Plate Star Fish craft
12. Plastic Milk Jug Whale craft
13. Ocean Buddies Plaster Casts Craft - Children of all ages will love to paint these ocean creatures. The set of three rubber molds cost about $5.00 and can be reused over and over. They are simple to make. Just mix the plaster, pour in the molds, let set, and peel off the rubber molds.  You can make these creatures for less than thirty cents each, not including the molds. Use water colors to paint them and when dry spray with clear gloss paint. You can find these molds at Wal-mart or Craft stores.
14. Sea Creature Wind Mobile craft
15. No Sew Stuffed Woven Fish craft
16. Puffer Fish - Click here to go to a web site with pictures and information about puffer fish. Joan Ivy, who sent in this craft idea just completed their VBS.  Click here to go to a newpaper with an article and pictures from the VBS program.
17. Sea Animals Picture Frame Craft -  Go to then Under the Sea page for directions on how to make this craft.  This was diffenitly the most popular craft we offered this year.  All the children loved them and they could be made easily by the littlest to the oldest children. They were also very cheap to make. I picked up two 10 pounds bags of Plaster of Paris from a garage sale for fifty cents each so they costs only pennies to make. I used plaster bought at a home emprovement store. It is much cheaper than buying it at a craft store.  Tip:  Mix your plaster thick, it dries much faster and is much stronger.
18. Deep Sea Treasure Chest Craft- Buying pre-made boxes from crafts stores can really add up fast. You can make your own boxes from white poster board. I think you can get 2 1/2 boxes from one sheet.  The sheets cost around 70 cents a piece. You will find a pattern for the boxes on the Mother's Day page under file boxes. I went to two garage sales today and both of them had some sea shells for sale, so keep your eyes open.  Note: These boxes take a lot of time to make and you really have to measure accurately to make them work.  I only made about 50 and said that was enough. Blue rick rack around the edge of the lid of the box would look really pretty like water.
19. Make bubble bath Craft. Here is a link to a site with a recipe - Tukids We used baby food jars to make bath salts for the older children.  I made some of the salt blue, some bluish green, and left some white.  The children layered the salt to look like waves. We had all the crafts displayed in our craft room.  Most of the children, even the older children, prefer the shaker bottles to the bath salts.
20. Make shaker bottles using distilled water and blue food coloring. I couldn't find little fish or sea creatures that looked right in the bottles so we just stuck shiny fish stickers to the outside of the bottle.  Add a tiny bit of clorax to keep the water from getting stagnet to a gallen of water. We made the mistake of filling the jars with water first.  Some of the water dripped and then the stickers wouldn't stick to the outside. Also we painted the lids of the jars blue beforehand since we only had 15 minutes for each class. Make sure you use paint that will stick to metal like spray paint. I mixed two different colors of blue aquarium rocks together and the children scooped them into their jars.  They then got to pick out some sea shells to place inside and then sprinkle some glitter in it.  Add the water last.  After the lid is sealed we glued blue shiny ric rac around the lid.
21. Make a cross covered with sea shells - Go to Bible Themes - Easter Page for directions.
22. Make a sea creature necklace or bracelet - You can buy plastic sea life beads from Oriental Trading Company. (Just type in beads in the search box to find them. They are under Craft Accessories.)

Crafts Ideas on other sites:

New Under the Sea Fun Mug - You can also buy mugs at Wal-mart for about $1.00 a piece.  The inside comes out.  There is enough room at the bottom to put some aquarium gravel, maybe some blue plastic wrap. Fish stickers can be placed on the inside part and then the mug can be put together to look like a sea in the mug.

Nutin' But Kid's Sea Page - has lots of Sea related ideas.

Ocean Diorama from Enchanted Learning.com - Just print out the patterns of the whales and tie them inside a box decorated to look like the sea.

Children's Crafts - This site has a cute little crab made from sea shell macaroni and pipe cleaners and a fish T-shirt. We made our crab a little different. We glued the eyes to the shell.  I also glued tiny sea shells onto the ends of a pipe cleaner for the pinchers. I used a real sea shell, but the small macaroni shells will work good.  You can have the children paint the sea shells red first and while they dry they can make a crab habitat by decorating a small heavy duty paper plate with paint and colored sand or (colored salt) or maybe some small sea shells or rocks or aquarium rocks.

Make a 3D Paper Sea Turtle Craft - Children color the turtle and then stuff the inside with Polyfil or tissue paper. This pattern comes with tortoise feet or you can make it into a sea turtle using the sea turtle feet pattern. Younger children will need lots of help assembling this craft, but they will love the end result. The pattern and directions for this craft is available to members only.

Make a Turtle Puppet out of fun foam and an old sock - You can use this cute puppet to tell your children stories with a personal touch. The same pattern as above was used except I used fun foam instead of card stock. This puppet was made without sewing. Everything was glued with a hot melt glue gun. The fun foam shell was painted with acrylic paint. The pattern and directions for this craft is available to members only.

New Together Time Activity Club - This site has great craft ideas. There is a craft for "Rocky the Octopus" paperweight and a really cute window fish.   If you want to make this craft a little more involved, have the children paint their rocks before they make the octopus. Prepare the rocks ahead of time by glueing fun foam or felt to the bottom so that they won't scratch up a table of desk.  You can also hand out small fish pens that can be ordered from Oriental Trading to place in the octopus' hand.

New Early Childhood Thematic Units - This site has some great craft ideas. They have a paper plate jelly fish, tissue paper fish, finger paint fish, flourescent octopus, and a sand art craft.  All these crafts are great for younger children.  For the jelly fishes oral arms we used a white plastic kitchen bag cut up into strips.  You can also add lengths of yarn for tentacles. (not pictured) We also glued on round sequins to the arms to make it sparkle.

1. Make an edible aquarium using jello and gummy fish. Make jello in a glass fish bowl or punch bowel and add the candy gummy fish when the jello is partially set.  Serve in individual plastic cups. For complete directions go to the Enchanted Learning web site.

Decorations

1. Paper Maché fish -  This seems like a lot of work. To save time buy the really strong balloons, don't blow them up to full.  Cut out the fins from construstion paper or tissue paper and glue them on using rubber cement (you can find this in craft and office supply stores)  It is also called contact cement or paper glue.  It is basically the same glue that you use to fix flat tires. You can make an octopus balloon by just gluing on eight streamers to the bottom of the balloon.

2. ShindigZ.com has a "Under the Sea" table cover 54" x 102" for $3.99 that can be hung up on the wall for a back drop.

3. We expect over 200 children to attend our VBS this year. We keep all the crafts that the children make until the ending program. The children go to their rooms with their parents to pick up the crafts they made all week and to meet their teacher. We have to have a lot of room to store the crafts and let glue dry.  One thing I am going to do is hang a huge (fishing net) net on one wall and use paper clips or clothes pins to hand some of the finished crafts, like the paperplate jelly fish.

Other Web Sites

Sea and Sky - This is a great website, with lots of great pictures of sea life. I love the quote they have at the top of the page from Jacques Yves Cousteau, "Sometimes we are lucky enough to know that our lives have been changed, to discard the old, embrace the new, and run headlong down an immutable course. It happened to me ... on that summer's day, when my eyes were opened  to the sea."

2000 Ark Avenue

 Crafts on this site:

1. Plastic Canvas Rainbow Craft
2. Noah's Ark with Opening Door and Windows
3. Paper Plate Noah's Ark
4. Noah's Ark with Rainbow

For other craft and activity ideas see the Noah's Ark Bible Lessons Page.

Road Race

Race Car Party Ideas - You will find some decorating, a license plate craft, games, and food ideas here.

We did the CD case picture frame for VBS last year. I simplified our version a bit so that small kids could do them without much assistance. Like yours, nothing was glued to the outside. I cut paper to fit inside the case. (Our theme had to do with race cars, so I used a paper with a black and white checker design.) I phographed all the kids, croped the pictures, and put double sided tape on the back. The kids did the rest. The kids stuck down the picture to the backgroud and added stickers as they desired. (I found some great stickers that tied into our theme: race cars, traffic signs, etc.) We stuck magnet tape on the back and had a wonderful remembrance from VBS. Marci MacDonald

Western Theme VBS

Wanted! Children After God's own Heart - Here is a great website full of information and links that will help you plan a complete VBS without buying materials. http://www.seanet.com/~eldrbarry/mous/wanted.htm

Crafts:

1. Knot Plaque - One of the primary skills required of campers and climbers is to be able to tie a few simple knots. With these knots he can pitch a tent, tie up his bedroll, bandage a sprained ankle or fasten his backpack. This craft would especially be of interest to older boys. It is inexpensive and can be finished in less than half an hour. All you need is a piece of wood, wood stain to finish the wood, rope for tying knots, twine or other decorative edging to put around the edge, glue, and a drill to put a hole in the back for hanging. Or you could staple a tied rope to the top for hanging.

2. Look under Mt. Extreme VBS from 1999 for other ideas

Veggie Tales

Decorating

Go to our Veggie Tales Page to get directions and patterns to make these cute Veggie Tale Balloons.

To get lots of ideas for Veggie games and food go to the Birthday Party Page.

Jesus Loves You

The following comments come from the Christian Crafters Newsletter www.christiancrafters.com.  They are from Terri from Abrams, WI  I thought she had some wonderful ideas and had to place them here.

1. Monday was God promised us a Savior, Jesus.  We cut out the star snowflake pattern you provided (Christian Crafters) and made an eight point star using two different colors of paper.  Showing God keeping  his promise and the star that showed where Jesus was born.

2. Tuesday was Jesus telling the disciples to let the little children come to him, to show he loves them.  We made the heart wreath from the craft site (Christian Crafters), using 3 inch foam hearts and writing Jesus loves (the child's name) on one of the hearts that dangles and (the child's name) loves Jesus on the other one.  We also glued a picture of the child in the center of the heart wreath and put a  magnet on the picture so the parents can put the wreath on the refrigerator or hang it from the string in the top of the heart.

3. Wednesday we talked about  Jesus dying on the cross and paying for all our sins.  We tried to make the bead cross (Christian Crafters) but they didn't lay out as well as the picture showed.  We  instead used made the cross out of palms, we actually used a plant with  similar leaves that grows wild in our area because every place I called  looking for palm leaves said call back at Easter.  We also punched outlines of different types of crosses into aluminum plates (only the circle base of the plate) and wrote sins we had done that day on card stock paper then using a PAID stamp with
red ink to cancel our sins.

4. Thursday we talked about Jesus rising from the dead and how they found an empty tomb. We made coffee filter butterflies and butterflies from card stock to signify Jesus entering the tomb and emerging in his heavenly form. We cut two butterfly shapes out, the same size, and colored them the same color.  Then we glued them together at the body, when they were dry we bended the top set of wings up to give the butterfly a 3D effect. We also inserted wire antennas. 

5. Friday was the 40 days and then Jesus returning to heaven. We made paper flowers, with coffee filters and pipe cleaners.

On the first day of VBS we set up a dead tree as we are dead from sin without Jesus and everyday the children hung the crafts on the tree.  By Friday our tree was alive because God kept is promise and  sent Jesus to save us and give us new life. Again Thanks for all the great  ideas and I hope this might help someone else reach a child who doesn't know that JESUS LOVES THEM.

More VBS crafts

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