This theme night is a fun event to kick off a new program. It’s Red Carpet Tacky Night. This was a movie premiere night theme. To make it more fun for the kids, we told them to dress in tacky clothes and “walk down the red carpet”. I was so impressed by all the tackiness! The kids and volunteers really got into it!
Here are some things we did to make it a fun night:
1. Decorations In my search for some cool decorations, I went directly to Oriental Trading. From OT, I bought some film strip rolls (which are called Premier Night Table Runner), but they are more poster-like and I used them on the wall making the film strip look like it was rolling. I also bought film strip ceiling decorations, the red carpet (which was red gossamer fabric), a movie buff inflatable (which was a big Oscar statue), movie night tissue door rope, peel and stick stars (for the floor), 2 directors clapboards, and some stick costume props.
I like to make one wall the focal point for our theme nights. For this night, I created a red curtain as the backdrop. I bought rectangle red tablecloths from Wal-Mart and attached them to a string. I folded the top of the tablecloth over the string and stapled it to make it stay. By using a string, you can bunch up the tablecloths which gives it the effect of a real curtain. On top of the red curtains, I attached the film poster and made it roll up every now and then which made it look like the film was rolling. Then I blew up the Oscar statue and put it right in front of the red curtain backdrop.
I like to hang things on the ceiling, so I took the film strip ceiling decoration and hung it in front of the focal point wall and all the way down the main hallway. I then took gold stars I had bought back at Christmas and hung them on either side of the film strip ceiling decoration.
We rolled the red carpet out just a few hours before we started (just a little side note, this red carpet lasted for about 30 minutes before it was torn in shreds by all the kids walking and running on it). I had to buy 4 rolls so it would run the whole length of the hallway from the door where the kids enter. I used duct tape to hold it down on the floor. Right in front of the door I attached the door rope to some music stands which gave it an aisle effect. I then used the stick and peel stars to look like our own “Bible Walk of Fame”. I didn’t peel them off, but just taped them down. On the stars we wrote the names of the people in the Bible we are learning this month: Abraham, Gideon, Samuel, Peter, and Jesus. The kids liked looking at the stars to see the great names from the Bible! Our final touch was silver, gold, and black star balloons which we got from the Dollar Tree. We bought lots of these and had them lined up and down the hall. I think the look we created was awesome and made it so much fun for the kids!
2. Pictures With any theme night, we always do a photo booth. For this night, our photo background was obviously the red curtain backdrop with the Oscar statue. Each class had a set time to come to our photo booth to get a class picture as well as individual pictures with the statue. Kids could use some of our stick photo props as well as the directors clapboards, too. Another great addition to our night was our “Paparazzi”. They were placed inside by the red carpet and took pictures of the kids as they walked down the hall. It was a great effect and the kids loved it!
3. Food You gotta serve some yummy food on your theme nights! One would think that popcorn and drinks would be a perfect snack for this night, but I decided to go with some cupcakes that were colored red on top. They were a hit! I also put out some bowls of candy for the kids to get: Dum-Dums, Skittles, and Starburst. I didn’t want to serve sodas so they kids got Capri Suns instead.
4. Movie Theme Activities I like to incorporate some sort of activity or activities during our theme nights that relate to that theme. Just some simple ideas. For this night, the opening activity as the kids arrived was for each child to draw a self-portrait inside the marquee handout we gave them. It had yellow spotlights all around it and made it look like a marquee or movie poster. The kids were creative in their drawings!
Another activity this month we are doing is a Spotlight Hunt. I cut out yellow circles using our die-cut machine. On this night we are studying Samuel, so on the back of each circle I wrote 1 letter on each circle that spells “I am listening”. The leader is going to hide the yellow spots around the room and then the kids will have to unscramble the words to figure out the message.
One more activity is to cut small yellow circles out using the die-cut machine or Cricut machine. The leader hung black butcher paper horizontally along the wall. Each child took the yellow circles and spelled their name in lights. One class actually took them and spelled out “Samuel”, their Bible story for the day. If you don’t have a die-cut or Cricut, then you could use white or yellow chalk on the black butcher paper and the kids could draw circles and make their name or the Bible story person name for the day.
If you do a theme night you got to make it fun and exciting so the kids will really get into it. I think our Red Carpet Tacky Night was a blast! I loved seeing the kids faces light up as they entered the hall and loved seeing their creativeness come alive in the tacky outfits they wore.
I hope you got some fun ideas here that you could use in your Children’s Ministry! Here are some more fun pictures from the night.
