I LOVE Vacation Bible School. I was saved at VBS when I was 11-years-old. It is very special to my heart. I love sharing God's love with the kids. We wanted to decorate our room like the Great Barrier Reef and have an underwater feel inside it. The welcome sign below along with the coral inside the room were created using foam insulation board from the local hardware store. I used a hot knife found here that I bought at Harbor Freight using a coupon making it $20. Last year we used a wire hot knife that I burnt out quickly making the NY Skyline out of the same foam board.
These palm trees were made using pool noodles, paper bags, tape, spray paint, wire hangers, and poster board. I will post a tutorial soon on how to make them. We made the surf board from the left over insulation board.
The purple coral has canned foam insulation sprayed onto it and painted over once dried. The fish are made from different sizes of coke bottles, 2 liters and 20 oz. The clam below is from the bottoms of the Coke bottles hot glued together. You can find a lot of information and ideas on my Pinterest board here.
We hung streamers from the ceiling to be the waves and clear ornaments for the bubbles. We bought inexpensive table clothes at the Dollar Tree and hung on the wall (much easier than bulletin board paper like we used for the night sky in our cityscape last year, although next time we will make sure nothing is left on the wall before we hang it up). We also used tan sheets on the floor for the sandy ocean floor. Then we finished it off with some squishy urchin looking balls from the toy section of the Dollar Tree, treasure necklaces and coins on the floor and some fishing nets hanging on the coral.
It was hard for us to keep up with the small pieces that went with each file folder game so we started storing them in sandwich bags. We added hole punches to the bag and the folder and secured the bag with brags. 
