Camp Cornerstone- Bible Boot Camp (Armor of God) Crafts

Our church had their Vacation Bible School (we call it Camp Cornerstone) last week, and my friend Whitney and I were in charge of crafts.

The theme for the week was Bible Boot Camp (the Armor of God), and we used this free VBS curriculum: http://ministry-to-children.com/free-vacation-bible-school/ written by Tara Merrill.

One of the men in the church let us decorate his Jeep and left it at the entrance of VBS.

I made some vinyl with my Silhouette machine and put it on there to make it more authentic looking.
I'll post some more pics of the decorations soon in case they can be helpful to someone else!

We decided to tweak the crafts to make them work a little better for our needs. We had around 109 kids, 5 years old through 6 graders!

Here's what we came up with:

"Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist..."

We talked about how belts hold everything together, and in the same way, so does God's truth.

(Canvas Belts ordered from S&S Worldwide, decorated with stencils made from my Silhouette machine out of vinyl. I used this ARMY font. They colored them with Elmer's Paint Markers & Sharpies, and then used glitter glue for extra touches.)

"with the breastplate of righteousness in place..."

We talked about how breastplates protect our hearts, and one of the ways as Christians we can protect our hearts is by learning God's Word.

(We ordered 8x10 canvasses from S&S Worldwide, and painted a shield on it using a homemade stencil made from my Silhouette machine and cardstock. Whitney created a graphic with the Bible verse, and they mod podged it on. We used plain ol' acrylic craft paints- 3 for $1 at Michael's!- and more glitter glue. This particular one was made by my 4 year old.)

"and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace"

We talked about how we needed to be ready to bring the Gospel to others.

(Boots cut on.... my Silhouette! Of course! Then liberal amounts of Elmer's glue was spread across the boot, and little squares of tissue paper were glued on. Whitney made the peace sign in about 5 seconds when I emailed her freaking out about how I wasn't able to get 120 "peace" words cut out in time. She saved the day and made them look even cuter. We punched holes in the top and let the kids tie a bow, and then added a magnet to the back. If we'd had more time, we were going to let them lace up the boots, but alas... )

"In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one."

We didn't get to come to this day because Em was puking (I think she got a little dehydrated). Fun times! We had a small mix up and originally were going to do Bible covers out of scrapbook paper as "shields" for our Bibles, but we ended up switching it up to make "shield bugs" out of paper plates. I need to get a pic of them from someone else who was there that day.

One of the great things about VBS - learning to be flexible and learning to work as a team. :) I'm SO thankful I had Whitney there with her creative brain.

"Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.."

(We made Sword bookmarks and Salvation helmets. The sword bookmarks were cut on my Silhouette, and then the kids glued tin foil on the backs. We cut two rectangles of scrapbook paper VERY generously donated by Heidi Lacy of Twelve Fridays Weekends. The smaller rectangle was 2 x 5 1/2", and the larger was 3 x 6". Because Heidi sent us SO much paper and we were originally going to use them for Bible covers, we are going to utilize the paper in other crafts for the kids & youth at church, and I will post them here when I do. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU, Heidi!) :)

Whitney whipped up these cool paper helmets that the kiddos colored, and we bradded together for them.

It was a lot of work, but man, was it fun! The kids had a blast with all these crafts!

If you have any questions, please leave 'em in the comments and I'll reply. I would love to be a help to anyone who is doing their VBS with this theme. :)