• Bring in various instruments or hang musical posters and cut-outs throughout the room.

• Create an orchestra pit in one section of the room. Invite church members to donate instruments and/or instrument cases.

• Trace and create large music notes to hang on the walls. Use an overhead to help you!

• Create a paper mural fence around the outside wall of your large-group area. Fill the rest of the area with stuffed dogs, dog houses, and pictures and posters of dogs.

• Create an oversized doghouse with large appliance boxes. For the ambitious volunteers with carpentry skills—put together a dog house with 2x4 planks, plywood, and other materials. Make the dog house large enough for kids to enter during a special time that you designate (treat time!).

• Decorate with oversized plastic dog bones, chew toys, and bags of dog food (watch out for roaming canines!)

• Hang storm clouds from the ceiling, and make a mural with tornados, hail, rain, and other weather images. Tape tinsel throughout your large-group area—to make it look like rain!

• Set up a mock news station or Storm Chasers center with computers, TVs, and other equipment.

• For the media-savvy, create a video with short segments from news media rain reports—or movies with famous storm scenes. Make sure all movie clips are age-appropriate and not scary for kids. Play the clips as kids enter and exit the large-group area.

• Have the kids help create a hot air balloon mural. On large sheets of paper, draw outlines of large hot air balloons-and let the kids color them in. Be sure to show the parents the hot air balloon creations.

• Use stuffing to create “puffs” of clouds and suspend them from the ceiling. For the very ambitious, decorate the ceiling with blue sky (on paper, of course).

• Decorate your large-group area with kites. Suspend them from the ceilings or hang them from rafters. Attach ribbon to fans-and create a windy illusion.

• Spray paint square cardboard boxes white and decorate the outside of your entire large group with “ice.” Use white butcher paper and batting throughout the area. Search online party and toy stores for penguin and polar bear inflatables to give the space a special South Pole feel.

• Use quilting batting for snow in your Sunday school room. Gather sleds and stuffed dogs to make some cute dog sled teams.

• Remember the cutout snowflakes you used to make as a kid? Well, get out the scissors and create some masterpieces! Use large sheets of paper to make jumbo-sized snowflakes for your walls.

• Make a mural representing a police station, fire station, and other emergency response centers. If you know someone who owns red siren lights, add those, too.

• Have leaders dress up like rescue workers (paramedics, firefighters, and police officers). Decorate the room with toy cars-police cars, fire trucks, and more.

 • Use inflatable life rafts as meeting spaces for your small groups.

• Create 3-D stars to suspend from the ceiling. Cut out pictures of planets as well and create your own version of “space.”

• Use dark sheets to cover walls (navy blue) and purchase glow-in-the-dark stars to affix to the sheets. Then you can darken your room during part of your large-group time and let your kids feel like astronauts.

• Create spaceships & rockets (use lots of foil). Visit http://spaceplace.jpl.nasa.gov/en/kids/projects.shtml for lots of creative crafts straight from NASA!

• Use Group’s Heroes poster pack around your room or in the hallways leading to your large-group area. Click here to find out more!

• Create a “museum” of different capes around the room – capes belonging to superheroes and Bible heroes. Use your imagination as to what the Bible heroes’ capes would look like based on the time period and their personality. And don’t forget about female superheroes and Bible heroes – the girls will love this theme too!

• Create a city skyline (cut out from black paper or cardboard) to place around your room. Little yellow squares of construction paper make great windows for your buildings. Let it become your own “Metropolis” or “Gotham City.”

• Create an inside wilderness with logs, rocks, fake trees, and hiking gear hung or placed throughout the large-group area. Ask volunteers and other church members for tents and camping gear to decorate with.

• Make your wilderness WILD by using realistic stuffed animals (bears, moose, etc.)

• Use water sound effects and wild animal sound effects (check your local department store, music retailer or online site for sound effects CDs).

• Create a shipwreck in your large-group area. Paint an island background on the wall. Out of cardboard, make a ship’s haul and set it against the island background. Use ropes and white sheets to create sails and other illusions of a “ship.”

• Consider using temporary fun tattoos for the kids during this module (no skulls and cross bones!). Leaders could wear eye patches and pirate hats, too.

• Make your room into an island. Consider using a plastic treasure chest, plastic gold coins (available at party stores and online toy stores), stuffed parrots, blow-up palm trees, and beach-themed items (sand, shovels, etc.).

• Take advantage of all the sights and sounds of the Christmas season by putting up a tree. Decorate empty boxes as presents to go underneath.

• Make your large-group area a giant tree land. Use paper cut-outs or murals around the room with giant tree trunks—so the entire room feels like it is “under the tree.” Create a canopy of leaves by decorating the ceiling with murals. Include fake or real branches suspended from the ceiling to reinforce the effect. Finally, decorate huge moving and appliance boxes and scatter them throughout the room to look like gifts under the tree.

• Build a large indoor Nativity scene with barn animals. You can use the large nativity scenes available at department stores, or create your own. Give the area a snowy feel by spraying fake snow on windows, creating paper snowflakes, or hanging up snowflake window clings.

• Make your large-group area feel like a cave. Block outside light and have the kids hold flashlights. Leaders could wear headlamps and carry lanterns (borrowed from church members—or available at camping stores.). Play sound effects of dripping water—it will reinforce a cave-like atmosphere.

• Make homemade stalactites and stalagmites from paper or foam to suspend from the ceiling, and attach them to the floor of the room. You could even use glow-in-the-dark paint (or paint enhanced by a black light) on the stalactites and stalagmites.

• Help kids make paper bats, cave spiders, and—for an extra special treat—create a pond with eyeless fish. (Fish in caves often don’t have eyes—and if they do, they don’t work very well).