Weird Animals VBS Church Decorations:
Decorating for VBS can be a considerable undertaking, but with adequate planning, you can decorate your church for VBS with ease. I am always excited about VBS; it’s one of my favorite times of the year. I didn’t attend church regularly, but I almost always got invited to VBS as a child. I can still remember the churches where I attended VBS. The adults always seemed so lovely, the church looked like a fun place to be, and we even got to make crafts! 😉
My experience with VBS is probably one of the main reasons I always try to serve. That, and I mean, come on, when else can you act like a total fool at church and have people love you for it!! Anyway, I generally serve in music, drama, or as a crew leader, but this year I mentioned that I would be happy to help anywhere they needed me. I had no idea that they would require me to head up the church decorating team! Boy, was I in for a surprise. We had a bumpy start, but I feel like we pulled off a fantastic atmosphere for the kids this year ( I pray they feel the same way).
Without further ado, I would like to share our Weird Animals VBS decorations with you. If you plan to use this theme, hopefully, these ideas will help make your decorating experience a little easier!
The Nest:

The Weird Animals VBS Nest was so easy to make. We used a kiddie pool, brown packing paper, hula skirts from the dollar tree, balloons, construction and tissue paper for the balloon eggs, pool noodle vines, and a pink flamingo spray painted. You can also see our carpet roll trees and a cardboard box we painted yellow to stand for the nest.

The carpet rolls were great for doing all kinds of weird animals decorations. We used them for trees and to hold these “wild” flower arrangements. We painted them with latex paint and drilled holes in them for cute pipe cleaner curls.
The Doorways:


For the doorways, we made paper chains. We used brown and green for the “jungle” hall entrance and white and blue for the access to the “ocean” themed pre-school room.
The Hallways:




For the main hallway, we used indoor/outdoor grass carpeting. Note: It’s cheaper to buy it in smaller rolls than having it cut from a large roll. We also painted cardboard boxes green and made our jungle grass for the bottoms of the walls. Our 3D flowers were made from poster board, and we printed the animals and cut them out to add to our walls. For the ceiling, we used green plastic tablecloths from Walmart and real ivy. We used bamboo sheets to decorate our other hall and used real bamboo that we cut to accent the sheets. We also used our posters all over the church. The lanterns came from The Dollar Tree.
The Stage:


For the stage, we used carpet rolls for trees with natural branches. We painted the carpet rolls with latex paint. I made one foam tree, and it took forever. I got a horrible hot knife, so after getting the tree cut out, I stopped using foam and just added some flowers that I got from The Dollar Tree. We used more cardboard grass, and some foam pieces from last year were repurposed as crazy props. We put the posters for each day on tri-fold boards and added the animals to a painted cardboard box.
The waterfall was just two different types of fabric hung from a curtain rod attached to the tree trunks.
So there you have it! We plan to do Everest next year, so I will be sure to share our planning and decorations with you for that!
Have fun, and remember why you’re doing it!