If you’ve decided to take on the exciting task of writing your church's own Vacation Bible School this year, boy, do we have you covered with 12 amazing activities that your kids will love participating in, from epic relay races to creative crafts!
Indoor/Outdoor VBS Activities
Noodle-Rific-Relay-Race!
Pool noodles come in handy for games. You can use them as finish lines, baseball bats, or dress-ups. In the Noodle-Rific-Relay-Race, kids will be traveling with their noodles the entire way through the race.
Equipment
- Pool noodles
Setup
Set up cones side by side to make as many paths as you have kids so that all the kids can race against one another. Make paths wide enough that kids will have plenty of room.
How to Race
When you blow the whistle, the kids must ride their noodles like a horse and gallop to the end. Then they will have to turn around and come back, but this is where it gets tricky. Kids must lay their noodles down on the ground and walk across them. Then, when they get to the end of their noodles, they can hop off, lay them in front of them again, and walk across them. They must continue this to the finish line!
Once kids finish this relay race, challenge them to another where they will have to run while holding their noodles on their heads, then turn around, lay their noodles down horizontally, hop over them, then pick them up and lay them down again. Continuing this pattern to the finish line. Have a noodily good time!
Scrabble Bible Verse Game
In VBS, we often have a verse of the day or at least one memory verse for the week that kids will learn. Playing a game is a great VBS activity to help kids remember the new verse.
Equipment
- Cardstock or construction paper
- Laminating sheets
Setup
Print each word from the verse on a separate piece of paper and laminate them.
How to Play
Have kids get into a line and hand them each a word of the verse in order. Ask them to hold the verse in front of them so everyone can read it. (If there are more kids than words, have kids pair up and hold the word together.) Stand back and read the verse that the kids are holding up.
Start scrambling the kids by calling out directions like, “If you (or one of you in the pair) have a favorite color of red, go to the end of the line.” And more commands like, “If you like eating onions, move to the middle of the line.”
Continue calling out directions until the verse is all mixed up. Once the kids are mixed up, ask them to lay the verse down at their feet and back away. Ask a volunteer to read the current order of the verse.
Then challenge the kids to all work together to get the verse back in order. Check the verse and if they have succeeded, ask the kids to read the verse out loud together. To get them to read it a few times in a row, pretend you can’t hear them and say, “I can’t hear you, what was that?”
Don’t Spill the Beans Relay Race
Another fun game you can play is called “Don’t Spill the Beans.”
Equipment
- Dried beans of your choice
- Two 2.5-gallon buckets per team
- Plastic cups
Setup
Split the kids into two teams. Give each team two buckets. One bucket will be filled with dried beans. (You can use any dried beans for this, garbanzo beans, kidney beans, etc) The other bucket will be empty. Line the kids up and give them each a plastic cup.
How to Play
The kid at the beginning of the line will scoop out beans and carefully pour them into their neighbor's cup. Each kid will pass them down the line until they get to the end of the line where that kid will need to pour them into the empty bucket. The game is called “Don’t spill the Beans” because if they lose a lot of beans as they pass them, the bucket won’t fill to the top.
Once kids run out of beans to pass, check to see if the bucket is full. If it isn’t full, it means they spilled the beans as they passed them.
Have extra beans on standby to add to the original bucket if the kids run out of beans when their bucket is not yet filled at the other end. Then the children will have to continue to pass more beans until the bucket at the end is full. If the kids are careful and don’t spill any beans, their buckets will fill up more quickly.
The first team to fill their bucket wins, and the race is over!
Kangaroo Hop Game
Games are great, especially when they make you laugh. Two giggly games that will be challenging for kids and keep them laughing as they play are, “Kangaroo Hop” and “Cookie on Your Face”.
Equipment
- Tennis balls
How to Play
In “Kangaroo Hop”, provide each kid with a tennis ball and ask them to hop across the room with the tennis ball between their knees. If they fall over or start giggling, encourage them to keep trying and get to the end!
Cookie-on-Your-Face Game
Equipment
- Cookies for each child
How to Play
In “Cookie on Your Face,” each kid will be given a cookie that they will have to put on their cheek by turning their face to the side. The challenge will be to get the cookie into their mouth without using their hands, but by moving the muscles in their face. This hilarious game will get you rolling with laughter, and cookies rolling all over the room!
VBS Water Activities!
Since Vacation Bible School happens in the summertime, take advantage of the summer weather! Here are 4 VBS activities you can use to create our own waterpark.
Slip-and-Slide
Equipment
- Slip-and-slide or large plastic tarp
- Garden hose
- Stopwatch
How to Play
At the slip-and-slide station, use a stopwatch and challenge kids to get the fastest slide from one end to the other! Announce the fastest slider at the end of the day.
Sprinkler Limbo
Equipment
- Sprinkler
- Garden hose
How to Play
Set the sprinkler down low and challenge kids to run and hop over it without getting wet. Raise it a little higher and have them try again. This is comparable to the Limbo, but the opposite!
Sponge Field
Equipment
- Lots of sponges
- Bucket of water
- Large grassy area
Setup
For the sponge activity, fill the sponges with water and lay them out as footprints for the kids to step on - no shoes!
How to Play
Have kids squash their way across the sponges without stepping on the grass. If they step on the grass, they will have to get back in line and try again. Challenge them to make it across by only stepping on sponges.
You can fill a whole field with sponges and let a few kids cross at once! To make it challenging, add a few dead ends that kids can’t see until halfway across the field.
Water Balloon Dodgeball
Equipment
- Water balloons
- Large buckets
How to Play
Finally, play water balloon dodgeball. Fill buckets with water balloons and let kids use them instead of balls. Split kids into two small teams and see which team has the last man standing.
Messy VBS Activity: Spray Dye T-Shirt
Tired of the old way of tie-dying t-shirts? Make it easy and a lot more fun with this great t-shirt spraying activity!
Equipment
- Empty water bottles
- Tie dye
- White t-shirts
- Plastic gloves
- Paint shirts or disposable plastic ponchos
Setup
Start by filling empty water bottles with tie dye. Supply plastic gloves for each kid and let them take turns spraying their t-shirt with different color spray bottles until they like how it looks!
Give kids large paint shirts or plastic disposable ponchos to wear over their clothes for protection as they spray. Once finished, pin them to a clothesline for them to dry. Follow instructions for drying and washing to set the tie-dye, then hand them out the next night so kids can enjoy wearing their VBS t-shirts sometime during the week.
Tips
- You can order white t-shirts with your VBS theme printed on ahead of time for kids to decorate.
- This is a great activity for the first day so kids can wear the t-shirts later in the week.
- We recommend doing this activity out in the grass and having kids lay their shirts down, give it a few sprays, and then turn it over to finish the other side.
- In a pinch, garbage bags make great ponchos!
- If you’re looking for more messy and fun VBS themed ideas, check out our newest VBS curriculum, “What a Mess! VBS”.
VBS Snack Activites
Every VBS needs a snack time, and if you can combine that with a craft, even better.
Rainbow Snack
A fun and healthy option is a fruit rainbow.
Ingredients & Equipment
- Watermelon
- Oranges
- Pineapple
- Honeydew melons
- Blueberries
- Red grapes
- Bamboo skewers
Precut watermelon, pineapple, and honeydew into chunks, peel oranges into slices, and cut grapes in half horizontally.
Give each kid a wooden skewer used to make shish-ka-bobs. Provide a piece of each fruit, plus 3 or 4 blueberries. Ask kids to put their fruit on their shish-ka-bob in the rainbow order: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.
Then give them each a few mini marshmallows to put on the ends as clouds.
Tip
- You can purchase curved bamboo skewers to get the rainbow arch shape!
Trail Mix Snack
Another fun make-your-own snack that kids will enjoy is trail mix. It might sound simple, but kids will love shaking it up to mix their snacks.
Ingredients & Equipment
- Ziplock bags
- Pretzels
- M&Ms
- Cereal, such as Chex
- Raisins
- Yogurt Drops
- Nuts
Begin by having each kid sit in a circle and hand them each a Ziplock bag. Then walk around and pour a little bit of pretzels into each of their bags.
Next, pour a little bit of M&M's and tell them to zip it up and start shaking. Next have them open up their bags and pour in a little bit of cereal in each bag, then raisins, yogurt drops, nuts, etc. Have the kids keep closing up and shaking up their bags as they wait for you to come around with the next ingredient.
By the time you are done, they will have a bag full of trail mix that they mixed themselves and it will be time to chow down!
Tip
- Add some background music to help kids get into the shaking!
We hope these 12 VBS activities will help make your program a success this summer! If you need help deciding what theme to do, check out our website and see all of the amazing options we have to offer!
