Decorating Spaces - Snowflakes

When I worked in the children's room at our public library we changed up the decorations with the seasons. Leaves for fall, snow for winter, and flowers and raindrops for spring. So I utilized the idea in our kidmin space at church.

We did stars in December to go along with the Christmas lessons and kept them up until after Epiphany. In the spring, we did butterflies and dragon flies and let the children color them. When we took them down, I sent the ones they had colored home with them.

If you have a suspended ceiling in your space, this is really easy to do. Just use a paperclip or binder clips to attach fish line to the metal grids between the ceiling tiles. It is a little tedious to punch holes in each item, cut the line, thread it through and knot it. I make little loops on the end that will go around the paper clip. If you use binder clips, you don't even need to make a loop at the one end of the fish line, just clip it to the grid. When using paper clips, I always used white ones so they blended in with the tiles.

Why decorate for the seasons? Kids notice it, and so do parents. It says to me that you care enough about the children coming that you want to make their space special. I didn't always do this, but whenever I did, the children loved it. You can watch the video below to see what we did.

If you are interested in learning how we decorated our walls in the J.A.M. Center, you can read about it in several posts. You can link to several sites that provide the materials to draw the designs in my post DIY Theming That Doesn't Look Like You Did it Yourself. 


Snowflakes from Joan Eppehimer on Vimeo.

Repurposing In KidMin - Doors & Windows

I admit it, I am a perfectionist. And I don't always take no for an answer. Sometimes that turns out to be a good thing. Like when we redid our children's area, and I could not stand how the old doors looked in the new area.

Chalk Board Tables

Chalk Board Table from Joan Eppehimer on Vimeo.

We had some old tables hanging around the church. For about $10 you can get a quart of paint and convert many surfaces into a chalkboard. We bought our paint at Sherman Williams (with coupons of course.) Amazon and Target also carry it.

The surface is quite gritty, but I read you can sand it with 150 grit sandpaper. Since I already primed the table you see in this, I can't sand it...BUT I can try the one that is under the blue tablecloth.

In our case, this project was kind of a dud. The kids enjoyed painting the tables, but so far, no one enjoys coloring on them as a pre-class activity. I will have to think of some creative ways to incorporate these into class. The surface does not look as nice and black as I thought it would either. A little disappointing.

DIY Polar Bear Cave

We made this really cute polar bear cave with crinkled up white paper (actually used same paper in 2 churches), cotton batting, "Buffalo Snow." ice chest ice blocks, blue cloth and lots of tape. You can watch the video below to see how it got put together.

Sunken Treasure Shop

We made this Sunken Treasure Shop with all repurposed equipment. We borrowed an old trunk and an old barrel. We raided our wise men and king costume box for treasure like material. The wise men's present boxes for gold, frankincense and myrrh became containers for prizes. Check out the video below.

Ocean Commotion Decoration Part 2

I found some more pictures from week 1 of Ocean Commotion VBS.

This treasure chest was for the kids to put their offering in. There was one for the boys and one for the girls. They were made from Styrofoam coolers. Another Pinterest project.

VBS Week 1 always includes a photo op for kids.

The platform decor used insulation panels. The back panels were painted to look like the bottom of the ocean. These coral panels in front were also painted onto insulation panels.

This is church number 2 where Ocean Commotion will take place. We decided to cover the murals with blue paper to make underwater scenes. You can buy a 1000 foot roll for about $70. We covered all the walls and have lots left. The paper is 3 feet wide and our ceilings are 9 feet high, so it is a perfect fit (sort of!).

Ocean Commotion Decoration

Sea Turtles, bubbles and seaweed.

We recently completed the first week of a 2-part VBS. Here are some of the decorations. Like the bubbles? We made them by soaking paper with water and then dropping blue paint onto the paper. See the picture below. Then we cut out different sized circles when it was dry.

They hung a gauzy material from the ceilings to replicate water and put black silhouettes of sea creatures above it.

I love the coral they made from pool noodles and Great Stuff (the spray insulation foam you can buy).

There were swarms of fish everywhere. The older ladies in the church loved cutting these out.

Even the coat racks get covered.

Church Nursery Makeover

Ever seen these babies in the nursery? No, not the father/daughter team, the cribs. A few years ago we decided it was time to do a nursery makeover, even though we didn't have any babies at the time.

DIY Theming Part 2 - Dignified Doors

In my last blog post I wrote about some DIY tools available through online sites to theme, remodel, or just spruce up your children’s area. In this post and the next, I want to show you what we

DIY Theming That Doesn't Look Like You Did It Yourself

Earlier, I wrote a blog post about the DIY remodel of the children’s area in our church building. I wanted to do the work ourselves to save money, but I had one stipulation: I did not want

How God Brought Our Walls Down (Sort Of)

Four years ago I began working my way into leadership of the children’s ministry in our church. There were a lot of changes to be made, and one of the first was updating our facility.

I started by asking a few people for some ideas. One idea that surfaced was to remove

Bible Times Sunday School Room

This room came about when we were doing a VBS a few years back. The program had scenery you could project onto the wall of a room to make it look like the inside of a Bible time’s home.  I thought we had some rolls of white paper we had made look like stone, and so I planned on doing the whole room instead of just one wall.

Two things changed that.

The Throne Room

This was a simple project. I had seen this really cool room on Debbie Jackson's blog for the story of Queen Esther. I fell in love with her backdrop. In fact, I coveted it! After diligently searching the internet I found it, only to learn that it was no longer available and  it would have been over $35 if it had been. Not very good for a blog about being frugal.

I kept feeling like there was another way to do this, but I could not envision it. So I did what I always do in these situations, I let it incubate in my mind. It never ceases to amaze me how God puts the answer together for me. I just see something or think of something that fits the bill. 

So for this project, it came to me – purple plastic tablecloths. The kind you get at the Dollar Tree. Then I needed a way to hang them up. I wanted them to hang like curtains, so I could have pleats in them to make them more royal looking. There may be a cheaper way to do this, but I bought 2 plain, long curtain rods and had someone hang them for me at the top of the wall I was using.

Then I bought 6 tablecloths (actually, I found a few somewhere in the church, so I only had to buy 3). 

I turned the top down and taped it all the way across to make a pocket to slide over the curtain rods.

  

I hung them from the rod and had my background for about $15 including rods and tablecloths.

The thrones presented another problem. We didn’t have any chairs with arms on them in the church. I could not think of what I had at home that I could transport. Then it hit me – folding lawn chairs. The old fashioned aluminum kind.

I had a long piece of goldenrod-colored cloth I cut in half to cover the “thrones” with. We also had some shiny gold cloth in our resource room. I just took a short rolling cupboard and covered it with some of the gold cloth to put the crown and scepter on. And voila! I had my throne room - fit for a king, or a queen in this case.

I reused the plastic curtains when we did the lesson on The Writing on the Wall from Daniel. See the instructions here. 

Colorful DIY Felt Boards

When I redid my 1940s classroom, I stripped it down to the plain walls and one table. I took the

bulletin and chalk boards down and the shelves and brackets off the wall and got rid of the storage cupboard. Then I scoured Pinterest for ideas of how to create an enticing classroom in a small space.

Last week you saw the metal board organizer I found and made. I also saw these cool flannel boards on Pinterest that were placed low enough for kids to play with. The flannel boards came from one of my favorite blogs, Apartment Therapy which has great DIY ideas for small spaces.

The Pinterest project called for Homasote boards.  I had no idea what Homasote was. Neither did the guy at Home Depot or our other local chain, so I did what any sensible person would do, I googled it.

I learned that Homasote is a brand name for a wall board product. It turns out that Homasote, and its generic counterparts are great for DIY projects. This fiber board has some added benefits. It absorbs sound, it’s moisture resistant and it even provides thermal insulation. Wow! And I just wanted functional felt boards that looked good.

 

I decided to make my boards shorter and wider than the tall and narrow boards on the original

Pinterest post. I had the vision of having felt cutout pieces from Bible stories available for the kids to play with when they arrived early.

Creating Space in Small Places

For my first remodel challenge, I attacked one of the rooms used for a Sunday School class in our children's area. Since the rooms were built in the 1940’s, they are small. Very small.  I think kids just sat at tables back then and never moved, so you could cram a bunch of them into a small room.  To view the complete remodel of this room, click here.

One of the first issues I addressed was how to make the most out of my small space. First I removed the cupboard and shelves that were taking up space in the room.

Next I made one of the organizational pins I had seen on Pinterest.  It was a magnetic board with little metal boxes stuck to it to hold crayons, scissors, glue sticks and all the stuff that had been in my cupboard.

Don’t Be a Wallflower – Make a Wall-Tree Instead!

I love this tree because it is 3D AND you can make it from used paper.

 If you have brown or black paper that you have used for a bulletin board background or for anything else, it can be repurposed for this tree. Because the paper gets twisted it doesn’t matter if it is wrinkled or messed up a little. You can even upcycle the brown packing paper that some companies stuff their boxes with to make this tree.

Classroom Upgrade

Our children’s ministry is located in the 1940s wing of our church facility. Needless to say, it is old. It needed a big overhaul, but not everyone was ready for that. Since I WAS, I began with my own class room.

Before Picture: space hogging cabinet and bulletin board removed

The first thing I did was to strip the room down. There was a huge bulletin board and a chalk board. I wanted the walls free so I could do whatever I wanted. I also took down the bookshelves and wall brackets.

The bulletin and chalk boards were glued to the wall, so it was a big job to take them off. Then