Custom Garage VBS

Summer always begins with big plans and goals.  The summer bucket lists are made and anticipation is always at a high.  Though my intentions are always the best, somehow summer always goes by so quickly.  Some of my plans work out, others definitely do not.  But one of my favorite parts of the summer is leading Vacation Bible School….and this is something that always works out. 

Now, I am a planner…we’ve established this a million times.  As soon as school ends I am ready to begin the planning.  I like to accomplish things as soon and as quickly as possible, so you better believe that any task that I can complete early on is done right away in the summer.  This usually means that we pick out a theme and go on to complete some of the early tasks (finding leaders, thinking through our general plan, etc.). Then we get to a point where we have to wait a little bit longer because we can’t make any more preparations until closer to time.  We wait until the Fourth of July rolls around and we go into planning overload once again to prepare for the parade.  We come up with a design, make shopping trips (always a favorite part), and of course build the float.  We work hard to ensure that the parade is a success and breathe a sigh of relief when we have accomplished another year of building a float.  BUT, then comes the really fun part.  Once the parade is over we have this moment where we realize that we are less than four weeks away from VBS.  This is probably my favorite part of the planning.  We can finally put all of our ideas and planning into action.  Details are set, meetings come and go, and I make more lists than the average person probably should.

As you remember from my post about the parade, our theme this year is Custom Garage.  I was a little hesitant about this theme at first…I mean it is all about cars which is definitely more of a boy’s theme…but I am absolutely in love with the theme and the many opportunities it opens up to spread God’s love.  We have some amazing workers who have prepared interactive Bible stories, memory verse games, delicious snacks (with a car theme of course!), water games, and some cool dance moves.  Do mechanics dance?!?!  Well…now they do.  We have a couple of cool guests lined up for the week and are planning to give out some prizes each night (if we find some prizes...).  I can’t tell you how excited I am about this year’s VBS! I feel very blessed that my church allows me the opportunity to be a leader for Vacation Bible School, and I feel even more blessed that God gives me a talent and then allows me opportunities to use that talent to serve Him.  Are you excited about VBS yet??? Well just to make sure you are…here are some pictures to preview some of what will go on during this year’s Vacation Bible School.  

We will be giving the children nametags to wear each night.  We designed them to be a Driver's License to fit the theme for this year. I'm hoping the kids will like them...I mean what kid doesn't want to be able to drive, right?!  And of course they are color coded for the different age groups.

I also made some signs that will be used throughout the week.  The one of the left is to help the different groups know where to sit during the opening program.  The picture on the right is an example of the signs that will be used to tell where the various activities will take place.

  There are a couple other projects I’ve been working on and some others I’m hoping to get in before it starts...in just a little over a week.  But before I go…let me give away one more secret (that is probably not such a secret after this many years). This is a picture of what one of our guests will entail...

Any guesses? ;)