VBS Crafts: Wooden Cross Christmas Ornament

These wooden cross Christmas ornaments are a meaningful craft that can be tailored to fit any VBS program! I’m using them with our Roar VBS (Group Publishing’s Easy VBS 2019).

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Supplies:

–Wooden crosses
-Drill with drill bits (or a bench top drill press)
–Spray paint
-1/4″ or 1/8″ ribbon (we’re using white and black)
–Scissors
–Permanent markers
-Accent items (glitter spray, adhesive gems, etc)

Every year, the story on day 4 of Group VBS is Jesus’ death and resurrection. We try to make this night’s craft a meaningful keepsake to remind them of the gospel (often a cross craft). Some of our night 4 crafts include suncatchers, large wooden crosses and stained glass crosses.

Instructions:

• Order wooden crosses. I ordered these (more ornately shaped crosses) because they were the most cost-effective option when I ordered them. I paid $.22 per cross. There are a variety of unfinished wood crosses available on Amazon. Ours are 4.2″ tall, which is a great size for Christmas ornaments.

• Use a drill with drill bits (or a benchtop drill press) to add a small hole to the top of each wooden cross – this will be for the ribbon to hang the cross. You can make the hole whatever size works well for your ribbon. My husband took care of this step. He used a 3/32″ drill bit and our ribbon has to be folded to go through the hole. A slightly larger hole would probably be easier for the kids to get the ribbon through! My husband’s tip is to drill slowly… since the wood is thin, it’ll crack pretty easily if you drill too quickly.
• Spray paint the crosses. We spray painted both sides of ours silver because I think that’ll be nice for Christmas trees. You could use any color spray paint (for extra fun, you could do multiple colors… we decided to keep things simple this time and make all the crosses the same color).

• At VBS, let the kids decorate the crosses. Since we’re using them for Roar VBS, we’re decorating them with the tagline “God is good!”. You could offer kids multiple ideas for phrases or bible verses to write on their crosses. If you’re letting kids pick between several phrases/verses, I’d write the options on several sheets of paper/posters and hang them around your craft space. This way kiddos won’t have to ask how to spell words or what the bible verse is.

• This is an easy craft to adapt for preschoolers! I wrote “God is good!” on the front of my ornament, then I let my 2 year old color on the back. I’ll add her name and the year by her coloring and have a special keepsake ornament!
• Add a ribbon to hang the ornament with. We’re using white and black ribbon – kids can choose which color they want. We had volunteers at our prep party drill the holes and cut the ribbon so the kids can focus on decorating the crosses at VBS.

• Optional: Add embellishments to the cross. You can really use any craft supplies you want here (glitter spray and adhesive gems are some of my favorite accents for the crosses)! If you use the glitter spray (or other sticky accents), you’ll probably want to let the crosses dry overnight. Otherwise these are ready to go home right away!

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