I thought I would share how we decorated our marketplace and "family homes" for Egypt VBS in 2010 and in 2016. We did not do all the marketplace crafts--I'm just including the official crafts for now (we did several alternatives as well...and I'm going to do separate posts for these).
The Scribe Shop (Hieroglyphics)
Reed mats just add something to table decor. I've seen unlined bamboo mats like these for $1 at the Dollar Store or Walmart. Party stores may have these too.
The Food Market
The food itself is most of the decor for this shop.
In 2016 we tried out a Basketry shop. This would be the 6th time we had done a Holy Land themed VBS, and so we had collected a lot of baskets (and I believe the shop keeper brought some from home too). So, we were able to make a pretty spectacular basket display around the edges of our basket making shop.
In the back, the stone is just part of our church. We used a cheap bamboo fence we got several years back at a party story to cover the window. Sheets we collected from hotels for costumes when we did Rome covered the sides. It really set a wonderful atmosphere.
Animal Market
Our Animal market took NO decoration. The lovely people who brought the animals from a local farm just let them graze freely in our church's grassy yard. The kids ran around with baby goats (kids playing with kids...and both seeming to have a blast). It was vastly different from having them in a cage for kids to visit. There were some chickens in a cage...and the donkey was supervised more for the kids safety, but in general it was more natural than your typical petting zoo. Both the animals and kids seemed more relaxed. We did NOT have this during our regular marketplace, but replaced one day's games with "visiting herders." We brought the kids in small groups so as to better supervise .
Other Shops
We did several other alternative shops as well (not from Group's material) . I'll be blogging about these at some point.
Back in 2010 our church did the Egypt VBS that Group is putting out again this year. I worked in the Marketplace making mud bricks, and I can tell you, it was a blast. It's cheap, fun and really does give kids a good idea about life in Egypt (or lots of places in the middle east, really...where most people made their houses out of mud bricks).
Here's my brick making suggestions:
THE DIRT ON BRICK DIRT
Group has instructions for making bricks, but for those not using this program, you can find instructions on the Biblical Archaeology website, or you can just experiment with your own mix of mud, straw, and water. Note that Group instructions skip steps 3 and 4, for obvious reasons--who has time for prepping mud for 5 days for a simple kids project? Turns out the straw was used because it releases humic acid which makes for really strong bricks--so the four days of mud stomping was to give time for fermentation and to mix the acid from the straw through the mud. For VBS craft purposes, less strong bricks will do...but if you were doing this for homeschool I could see how going through the whole 5 day process might be educational.
I'd say in most cases it's better to get regular straight out of the ground dirt if you can (especially if you live in a place like Texas where the ground is literally called Texas clay). Garden soil or sand does not make especially sturdy bricks, but the bricks I made out of "Texas clay" from my backyard ...that dried rock hard and solid. You can ask volunteers to each bring a bucket of dirt from home or you can talk with a construction company to see if they have any extra "out of the ground" dirt you can use. As for straw, we didn't chop our straw up in little pieces and the big pieces did make our bricks less stable. Chopping up straw is time consuming so I suggest involving the kids in this step. Kids love cutting up things into tiny pieces anyways and you can cut up straw with scissors.
BRICK MOLDS
Group instructions also include dimensions for the mold, but if you need dimensions, I have some on my homeschool site here (not sure if this was the same as group's). They are pretty simple to make, just four short pieces of wood nailed
or glued together like in the picture above (ours were a little
narrow--slightly wider ones are easier to work with). You will also want to reserve some thick short slabs of wood to use to help kids pack the mud and push the bricks out of the mold (see below).
A butter knife can be useful to run along the side of the brick mold if the brick has trouble coming out of the mold. Below a child uses a plastic knife to smooth his brick.
The bricks shown here were made with a mix of
garden sand/soil mixed in, and came out kind of
crumbly. "Texas clay" straight out of my back yard
worked much better - it dried solid like rock.
LOCATION AND MESS PREP
This "craft" is messy! If you can, put your brick making area outside...doing this craft on hard ground or cement is preferable. If the only outdoor location has grass, you may need boards, cookie sheets, or other flat hard surfaces to put your bricks on. If picnic tables are available they work well...but remember to cover them with a plastic tarp or disposable tablecloth.
If you have to do this indoors (as we did), protect your floor with a large tarp and line the outsides of the area with towels for kids to wipe their feet off on. Also, have some extra towels and a bucket of clean water for kids to wash their hands in...maybe some hand sanitizer or soap too (Historical Tidbit: Egyptians actually had a form of soap). Also, be forewarned that your clothes will get muddy...it will add to the authenticity of your costume (*wink*). We offered kids pillowcase tunics to wear during VBS, which worked to protect their clothes from home too. If you don't do this, I would suggest providing some sort of apron or overshirt for kids to wear during this craft.
My outfit during the week got
more and more "authentic"
DECOR
At our VBS, "shopkeepers" were in charge of decorating their area. Decor for the brick making shop is pretty simple. The bricks themselves can be part of your decorations...as the week progresses the kids will need to leave the bricks to dry, though having a few to show to start with is helpful. Hey bales can be used as seats. For covering your table and any decorative draping on the sides of the tent I suggest beige plastic shower curtains. Only use sheets if you own them, not ones you've borrowed as they could get mud splattered on them. I managed to find one real wooden bucket at a thrift store for ours, but we had plastic ones too...you could paint plastic buckets like wood but I don't think it would be worth the trouble, personally (cause you'll need a lot of buckets for this). If you are outside you can keep dirt in piles. Hay looks nice in burlap sacks or canvas laundry bags (but again, the messiness factor is something to consider...only do this with donated bags, not loaned).
7. Dry your bricks on trays of hay or sand to keep them from sticking. You will need to take them outside every day to dry in the sun, so kids will have to leave them (pray for no rain!).
8. An idea we toyed with but didn't use was making something with our bricks--like a firepit or an edging to a flower garden. Didn't do that, but I still think this would be cool (depending on the sturdiness of your bricks).
Child playing with the muddy water we used to mix our bricks.
MISC TIPS
Younger kids may come back to play in the dirt and mud. Our brick-making shop turned into an "extra activity" for wee ones who finished early in other shops.
This is part of my series on 1st Century Nazareth. This page contains some affiliate links through which I can earn commission.
The picture to the right shows a woman spinning thread like a woman in 1st Century Isreal might have done. They would start by making yarn using a drop spindle, then might dye the yarn, and then weave it on a loom. All of these activities make great crafts, though some of them are not as easy for young children.
MAKING THREAD ON A DROP SPINDLE
I have not tried this out but it looks as if this is a craft which could be done with older children and teens, but might be too hard for younger children. A drop spindle can be made from a dowel and a door pull, wooden car wheel, or even a an old CD. There is a good video showing how to use a drop spindle here, and you can find some detailed written instructions here (though it looks like two different types of spindles were used, one with a weight at the bottom and another with a weight at the top). Making enough string for even the coaster sized weaving project below would probably be too time consuming for a typical VBS marketplace session or Sunday School class, but it looks like making enough for three strands for a braided bracelet might be possible.
DYEING
While it’s possible to dye with the same natural materials used in the first century, most methods require boiling and some considerable time. So, if you want to dye wool or cloth with large groups of children children commercial dyes may be preferable (though you can use grape juice or kool-aid). Solar dying is an another option that doesn't involve boiling water but can take a week or more of the jars sitting in the sun (though kids can take their jar home to leave in the sun...you just need a lot of jars).
Click on the links below to find out how to make various dyes which might have been used in first century Galilee:
Chicory and Walnut Dye
(Also has a Goldenrod Dye, which is Native to the Americas and wasn’t in Isreal at that time. But chicory and walnut were both available in Isreal).
WEAVING
Making coaster sized rugs or woven bracelets with cardboard looms is a craft children can do, and which many adults would enjoy as well. You can find a tutorial here or check out the video below. You can make the looms yourself from scrap pieces of cardboard, though if you are doing these with a large group it might be worth it to buy them (you can find a variety of sizes for sale here and some wide-notched varieties that work well for kids here). To make it easy for children to weave, you can glue popsicle sticks to the end of pre-cut pieces of yarn for them to use as a “needle” to pull the thread over and under the strings, or you can purchase plastic needles. Unfinished projects can be taken home, but make sure to first demonstrate what to do when finished (and possibly send home printed instructions). Another option is a straw loom which is sometimes easier for little hands.
The picture above is the weaving craft we did for VBS (in process of course...it often took kids more than the 20-30 minutes we had to finish this one, though some older kids did). We purchased notched cardboard looms from Dick Blick. As you can see, the kids pulled these a little tight (in one case EXTREMELY tight), so that's something to talk to kids about before you do this, and watch for so their weaving is of uniform size. We stuck balls of yarn the children had chosen to use next in the loom to save it for later. It can be helpful to pre-cut several small balls of yarn so kids can just grab them and go.
HOW TO WEAVE ON A CARDBOARD LOOM
This video covers all the basics. I will note that I've never done the step they show where you weave the loose ends on the side back through...usually I just cut those off, and sometimes I even end those in the middle of the row, and I've never had a problem with it. If I were to do that technique, I think I would try to end some of my rows on the other side so that both sides had a little extra thickness, not just the one side. But with kids, I think just having them cut it off is simpler.
HANGING LOOM (Group Project)
At our VBS we had a large hanging loom which kids could try out. It consisted of two poles of equal length, attached by thick twine (needs to be thick to hold the weight of both sticks and the finished project.)...the whole thing was hung on the tent. I wasn't the one who constructed it, and I wish I had paid a little more attention. While obviously it is tied at both ends, I remember she looped the twin over both sides first before tying and I think this was to make sure the length of the twine was even when tied.
We used mostly strips of old t-shirts to weave with, and a few plastic bags too (though I think for authenticity I might have left those out if doing this again, though they do make an interesting texture.).
Here's how the loom looked in our "marketplace shop."
Our Animal market took NO decoration. The lovely people who brought the animals from a local farm just let them graze freely in our church's grassy yard. The kids ran around with baby goats (kids playing with kids...and both seeming to have a blast). It was vastly different from having them in a cage for kids to visit. There were some chickens in a cage...and the donkey was supervised more for the kids safety, but in general it was more natural than your typical petting zoo. Both the animals and kids seemed more relaxed. We did NOT have this during our regular marketplace, but replaced one day's games with "visiting herders." We brought the kids in small groups so as to better supervise . 
