What I Did On My Summer Vacation Part 2 :: VBS

This summer our church hosted a Vacation Bible School called Kingdom Chronicles.  Geary was asked to be the Bible Teacher and I was asked to help with the set.  So right after the school year ended we got to work on our assignments.

This drawbridge was a team effort.  I found that board at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore.  On the other side there is fake shower tile.  Then I made the "chains" by typing rope into loops.  Ron, who is very handy had the brilliant idea to wrap the church doors with our castle backdrop and we found those banners in a church closet and I rearranged the trim and tassels to make them look more kingdom-y.

It was such a fun entrance into our sanctuary!  And it amazingly held up all week, although we did have to tuck the rope chains back under the drawbridge periodically.  Some kids can't resist pulling on ropes.

Another assignment I took on was all the "torches."  These were just triangles cut out of orange and yellow tissue paper.  I glued them to a strip of construction paper and so we could place them in our sconces without the danger of any paper touching the hot lightbulbs.

Here's a closer look.  The strip of paper simply lines the inside edge of the sconce. 

I love how the light glows through the "flames."

I also made these torches out of more tissue paper, paper cups, and black poster board.

These got placed all around our stage set and really seemed to add some texture and dimension.

This was our dragon chamber.  That gate is made entirely out of duct tape.  

"Stained glass windows" made from tissue paper, clear contact paper and poster board.

And a green knight with my own little Sir Toby.

Thanks to the generosity of our school's drama department 

we able to find a fantastic knight costume for Geary.

I didn't get to watch him teach but I heard over and over again how good he was.

Sadly, I wasn't able to get many pictures of the boys while they were at VBS.  Here's Toby in the front row, far left.  He's sitting next to his leader, Caleb who is awesome!  Toby was feeling pretty shy but Caleb was a rock and after a couple days at VBS Toby was having a great time.

Here's Caleb sharing about being a runner and 

needing the right equipment and always being ready to take the baton.

Games!

One of the things I love about our church is that the youth group helps run VBS.  Here are some of our talented actors who taught us great lessons about being members of the Kingdom.

 VBS was super fun and I'm really glad my family got to be part of it.    It was a great start to our summer vacation generated a TON of conversations at home about being a knight, living in God's kingdom and which king we want to serve.

The day after it ended, we headed off on our first trip.  My next post will be all about Black Butte Ranch.