Tips for Decorating Your VBS Assembly Area

A big part of VBS is decorating to set the theme and to help your students feel truly immersed in the experience. This year’s theme, The Incredible Race, is an international one so the decorating ideas are virtually endless. You can pull from any culture found on the five continents visited during the week: South America, Asia, Africa, Europe, or North America.

Perhaps the most time-consuming room to decorate is your assembly area, especially if you are performing the drama live on stage (alternatively, you can play the recorded drama we provide). The stage really “sets the stage” for your students as they enter each day so it’s important that it looks great and clearly displays the theme. For The Incredible Race, the drama features a team of people who have crash-landed in a Central American jungle near a step pyramid. To add international interest, you may want to add illustrations of the continents to your stage or images, of children from different cultures around the world.

On our Pinterest page, we shared some photos of the assembly area from one of our test churches. This may give you some ideas, but if you have a favorite or specific country, region or leftover decorations from a previous VBS, feel free to run (or should we say “race”?) with it. The only limit is your creativity and the necessity of having a jungle area center stage if you’re performing the drama.

We produced a series of videos in one of our test churches to give you some decorating ideas but use your imagination and have fun with it!

Find more photos on our Incredible Race VBS Assembly Area Pinterest board.

The kids will be traveling to South America, Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America during VBS, so plan your decorating around those continents. We want to celebrate the beautiful variety of cultures found around the world and encourage our kids to explore other traditions and heritages. At The Incredible Race, we want to let our kids know that no matter where we come from or what language we speak, we are all part of the same race—the human race!

We also share how one church chose to decorate their assembly in this video (parts 2-5 are available oon this playlist, which also includes other decorating ideas for your other spaces):

Learn more about Answers VBS and The Incredible Race at AnswersVBS.com..