Scheduling Ideas To Increase Time and Space
A lack of space or time can be great challenges to a VBS schedule. While it may be impossible to add hours to the clock or additional rooms to the church building, there are ways to stretch or increase both time and space.
Use recreation as an early arrival activity. Weather and space permitting, move recreation activities to the front lawn beginning 30 minutes prior to the advertised starting time.
Serve a quick snack as kids are transitioning between two rotations, or between the opening worship rally and the first rotation.
Combine snacks with crafts, music, or missions rotations.
Alternate two rotations such as crafts and recreation. Schedule Group A to participate in crafts on days 1/3/5 and recreation on days 2/4, and Group B to participate in recreations on days 1/3/5 and crafts on days 2/4.
Utilize the same space for both worship rally and music rotation.
Use the content of missions rotation with the closing worship rally.
JOIN THE CONVERSATION: How have you been able to increase time and space in your VBS schedule?
I have been the preschool director for our VBS since 2011. The babies through twos (in our case, the younger twos) are all in one contained classroom. They stay there and our music rotations, and sensory play (as their rec time) come to them. For our setup, having two rooms for our older 2s and 3s has worked out wonderfully. When they are in one room having lessons, the assistants are setting up for crafts in the other. When crafts are being made, another assistant will set up for snack in the original room. The switching back and forth between two rooms right next to each other is an easy way to keep kids safe but also keep them engaged. for safety reasons, our older 2s and 3s have rec in a fenced in yard in the area.
and this is completely unrelated, but I for one am excited for the jungle theme with the little ones this year. last year at agency D3, I had the kids burn off steam pretending to be secret agents with magnifying glasses. This year, I already have ideas, and I think I am going to have my kids wear safari vests made out of paper grocery bags, and use binoculars made out of toilet paper rolls. just some ideas if y’all are needing some easy time fillers.
thanks lifeway for creating such an inclusive vbs that encompasses all age groups, including the littles 🙂
Our church runs over 200 for VBS each year and we are extremely space limited.
We compensate by:
Three general rotations and the children are split into grade based teams. K-1st are one rotation, 2nd-3rd the second rotation and 4-5th the third rotation. The rotation areas are recreation/snack (combined), crafts, and bible story/lesson.
The story/lesson starts with VBS music and we play memory verse games as we work on the verse, then the bible story/lesson for the day, then we practice VBS dance moves to the music. Each day is a different song/moves.
Our VBS children start with check in (we use tyvek wrist bands to identify each grade/team) in which children are encouraged through team points to bring visitors, come with their band still on, and say their verse. Once they check in, we have pre-VBS games as they wait for the worship rally each morning. This is a time when we learn the choreography and/or practice what we have learned the prior day. This is repeated at the end of the day, with a prize for the ‘winning team’ of the day.
We also use daily themes and teams receive points for those whom have dressed up.
It’s a really fun, really energetic, really exhausting week! The adults and children love it!
KidEvent, Lifeway’s online tool for registration, has been a blessing as well.
Our church normally does a 5 day VBS. This year they are asking to decrease it to 4 days! Not sure how that would work…any ideas? Thanks in advance!