Rather than hitting the slopes, eat them! These chocolate, no-bake snowy mountain cookies are as easy to attempt as the bunny hill.

We use cardboard for decorations most years. Last year, we got donated cardboard and had some leftover. We decided to use cardboard instead of foam board {like Group suggests} to save on our budget. We made a cave entrance that will go on stage along with our cave formations {stalagmites & stalactites}. You can also...

In the mountains we may be doing snow dances on the ski slopes (boooo), but in preschool we're getting cozy and trying to enjoy the rest of winter Dramatic Play style! This year we brought the outdoors in and combined a cozy cabin with some sledding and ice skating fun. I rolled up big sheets of brown butcher paper like ribbon candy and used a stapler to attach it to a large piece of cardboard for our little log cabin entrance. Inside, students are cooking up some hot cocoa while we work on sequencing, peer interactions, and concepts of "hot" vs. "cold." We made our little cocoa station using empty hot chocolate containers, spoons, mugs, and white pom pom balls for marshmallows. Some of my team members were kind enough to lend their thermoses and we've had a bit of a tailgate at the ice rink... To create an ice skating rink, I used four pieces of white poster board, rounded the outside corners, sprayed with adhesive, and coated them liberally with blue and silver glitter before running each through the laminator. The four boards are attached together using clear packing tape and the whole "rink" is stuck to the carpet with velcro. We then created "ice skates" using paper plates and more packing tape and we've been working on our winter s-blends. So easy and my students are seriously loving it. I target size concepts, comparatives and superlatives, pronouns, and following directions while preschoolers work together to build a snowman. We spray-painted cardboard boxes for stacking and punched holes for buttons and facial features (we found a kit at the dollar store, similar available here and here). How cute is this spontaneous snow-woman? This unit I am learning that sometimes the simplest, least expensive things can make for a lot of play and creativity. What kind of winter fun are you getting into this January?

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Make faux rocks with a tight ball of newspaper or brown paper bags, painters' tape and decoupage glue.

Rather than hitting the slopes, eat them! These chocolate, no-bake snowy mountain cookies are as easy to attempt as the bunny hill.

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notyourgramma: “It’s been a down day all day today, but just now, looking at this scene, I find it impossible to be sad. ”

Try this 3D craft with your elementary and youth students. What a great reminder that God is bigger than any mountain (or valley) we face!

Get an in-depth review of Bogard Press's VBS, Alpine Ascent - Find Strength in God's Word % Each year, we review the themes from every VBS publisher to help you decide which one is just right for your church.

Try this 3D craft with your elementary and youth students. What a great reminder that God is bigger than any mountain (or valley) we face!

Rather than hitting the slopes, eat them! These chocolate, no-bake snowy mountain cookies are as easy to attempt as the bunny hill.

As was last year, the motto for our VBS was "Go Big, Or Go Home." And with a theme like Everest, of course we had no choice but to go big. I duplicated Group's giant mountains, using 2" thick foam board and a hot knife for carving. I went a different route than Group for the carved dimensionalizing, and opted instead for something a little more irregular. By using blue foam board, I didn't even have to paint the carved-out sections. The melted foam board in the indentations took on a darker blue, and looked very real. I painted on the white snow without diluting it. You can get a sense below of how massive this stage set was. For the clouds I used 4" nails on the front of the mountains and skewers on the edges when I wanted the batting clouds to be placed outside of the outline of the mountain. You can't see here, but the mountains are leaning on chairs. They're heavy enough to not fall over. The men volunteers did brace the largest mountain using fishing line. The memory buddies were mounted to 1/16" foam board and cut out using a small electric hot exacto knife. It was a lot of work to cut them out like this, but worth the effort, as I prefer them as freestanding figures rather than with their backgrounds. Large plastic snowflakes hung in the arches of the two doorways flanking Mt. Everest. My office workplace, when moving and purging, was giving away a bunch of giant white IKEA curtains, so I nabbed those, using them for a snowy ground. Maybe one of my favorite items was this guy on top of rocks. With all the leftover 2" thick foam board, we were able to make lots of rocks. A pair of skewers stuck into the foam board base and then carefully up through the memory buddy's base made him sturdy and unmoving. The snow on the rocks is made of thin sheets of batting (I think they're made for quilting). The thinness of the bird's feet made it difficult to place him on the ground (without having to make a base of some sort), so we stuck him to the back of the mountain using a couple nails. The seams on the boards was a bit more visible than I would have liked, but I was antsy to get them painted and move on to the next project. I guarantee there were no children whispering to each other behind a cupped hand and pointing to "those embarrassingly sloppy seams." For base camp, we used a small tent, fake rocks, a lantern and a pair of my hiking boots. The ropes with the fabric ties was a last-minute add on that was a nice touch. The edges of the steps got a little snow. And the campfire was made using the electric "flame" from Group surrounded with a batch of firewood, and placed on brown fabric. At the entrance to the sanctuary, volunteers hung plastic snowflakes of different sizes from the balcony railing. The six windows between the sanctuary and the narthex were sprayed with Santa brand artificial ice crystals. It's super cool the way it sprays on like water, and then as it dries it forms crystals. And it comes off easily with water. As soon as I knew what our theme was this year, I called Stone Summit, a local indoor rock climbing facility, and asked if they might have any old rope to donate. Turns out that they "retire" rope after a certain amount of time AND it comes in all these beautiful colors. The owner was super nice and collected it for me; I'd stop by once a month to pick it up. (For liability reasons, I had to vow that the ropes would not be used for climbing, but strictly decor.) I decided to use them for the pew markers. I cut the pieces into uniform sizes and then duct-taped each into a single piece. I looped them over the ends of the pews three times. I purchased a rainbow of caribiners from Walmart for something like 69 cents a piece, clipping a carabiner on the bottom-most loop of each marker. Then from each carabiner I hung a memory buddy. Each memory buddy was cut out and glued onto a piece of foam (I used six different colors foam). Each piece of foam was slipped into a clear plastic sleeve (I used the three-ring kind you get at an office supply store, cutting off the three-hole-punched strip). To make the hole that the carabiner slipped through, my standard hole punch wasn't big enough, but a grommet maker proved perfect for stamping out the hole; using the actual grommet wasn't necessary. With the extra rope — most of it in smaller lengths — I was able to create tactile stations, decorating everything from railings to doorknobs. Here, the door to the sanctuary gets a rope treatment on the doorknobs and a little snow in the windows. On the Saturday before VBS I usually wind up with a few wish-list items. And depending on the pool of volunteers I get, sometimes I can cross items off the list as "done." Well this year I pulled out my phone, hit the Pinterest app, and showed one of my tried-and-true guys a directional sign. Within less than a half hour he had combed the church, found scrap pieces of wood, and fashioned me this. One of my creative high school volunteers gladly tackled this project. Its base wrapped in a snowy white sheet, and a memory buddy to wave a welcoming hello, this was one perfect last-minute addition!!!! Look at the cute bite marks in the "Snacks" sign. Ok, so about a month, maybe more, before VBS I decided that I wanted to tackle the plastic milk jug igloo. Announcements went into the bulletins, were posted on Facebook, pleas made via email . . . all to collect the 428 jugs needed to build the igloo. The amassing went slowly. Then our VBS director hit a goldmine. Did you know that a single Starbucks location goes through 60 jugs A DAY???? So we hit up our local Starbucks and they were all too happy to help. On the Sunday before VBS the igloo was completed. We did have to buy some water for the last of the jugs. And the igloo builder did have to fill in the top of the igloo with an engineered pool noodle dome. But that was easily covered with the piece of batting snow that I had already planned on putting on top. OK. THIS. WAS. SO. WORTH. THE. FREAKING. OUT. AND. EFFORT. TO. GET. JUGS. Built on a base of white sheets and against the Group mural backdrop, the igloo will be used by our official VBS photographer to take the individual camper photos. The inside of the igloo. Originally I was taking the caps off so that the insides could get dry and stink-free. But it's better to leave the lids on for these reasons: 1) It keeps the stink in. Even though I had aired out the jugs, they still stunk and had to be rinsed out. Even still, they still stunk. 2) The igloo builder said that the lids kept air in the jugs and made them easier to glue together. The jugs without the lids would flatten more when glued together. 3) The colorful lids make for a way-more-fun experience inside. Sorta like a mullet (business in the front, party in the back), by keeping the lids on, you get the juxtaposition of realism on the outside and whimsical on the inside. NOTE: The yellow jugs were well worth making a part of the igloo. Seems the polar bears tinkled on the ice that made those blocks. On the snack tables we used white plastic tablecloths. Clear glass blocks (the kind you buy at Home Depot) gave the look of blocks of ice. Wearing rubber gloves, we took durafoam balls (these are better than styrofoam because they're solid), sprayed them with an adhesive (don't spray too close or the glue will turn yellow; make it a light mist), then roll them in faux snow. There are all kinds of fake snow, but the "flurries" are the best, capturing the most realistic look of snowballs. Plastic snowflakes were used as the base and leaning against the glass blocks. The memory buddies were printed and cut out, and anchored using skewers. A sprinkling of Epsom Salts was the final touch in creating a winter wonderland centerpiece. For the front doors of the church, snowshoes were crafted using string and cardboard. Easy peasy (and hung with Command strips for easy takedown). For Bible Expeditions, the tomb walls were easy to construct from the 2" foam board. The blankets were leftovers from Hometown Nazareth VBS. I wasn't totally into the brown paper and pool noodle tree that Group suggested, so I found three 6' long mailing tubes, duct-taped them together and then papier-mached a tree. As janky as it is, I concluded that I wasn't really up for papier-maching the limbs. So I found branches, and we glued on cut-out-from-felt leaves. Harleigh thought the awkward transition between trunk and branches was beyond awkward, but . . . . . . all that is trumped by the cute little Beanie Baby owl who's taken up residence in one of the knotted holes. For the river, we used a shimmery fabric. I found fish and lily pad images online, printed and cut them out, and then taped them onto the fabric.