We created this set for an 8-week series I wrote over the summer called Puzzling Parables. It will be available for you to purchase this week! In this series, kids will learn about some of the famous parables Jesus taught while he was on earth and how they can apply the spiritual truths to their lives. They will meet Captain Puzzler, the greatest puzzler of all time! The cost for this set design was $0 for us because we already had the foam board and paint on hand. If you need to purchase the foam board it would cost you about $17 for two 4×8 sheets of it at Lowe’s. My inspiration for this set design and series was simply put, puzzles. For this series, we focused primarily on the main stage area, with a few ceiling decorations as well.

Let’s start with the giant puzzle pieces on the stage. We made the puzzle pieces for the stage out of one 4×8 sheet of foam. The foam I used is 3/4 inch thick and you can find it at Lowe’s for about $8 a sheet. I wanted all of the pieces to be able to fit together so it was an actual puzzle as you can see in the picture above. We drew the puzzle pieces with pencil and cut them out using a hot knife. This is definitely a two person job because you need one person to hold the foam board up on it’s side while the other person cuts the puzzle pieces out. You won’t get far by yourself on this project. Once we had the pieces cut out, we painted the symbols of the parables for the series on each of the pieces and painted the Puzzling Parables logo on the middle piece. The symbols are slightly different from the ones in the graphics you will receive with this curriculum because we were using different graphics at the time. You can use the symbols from the new graphics to have them tie into the series graphic on the screen. We chose to split the puzzle pieces up and hung some of them from the bottom of our main screen and attached some of them to small wooden stands so they could stand up freely on the stage. You can choose to leave the pieces split up or put the puzzle together on the last week if you so desire.

We used a second sheet of foam to create smaller 3D puzzle pieces for the ceiling as well as four large puzzle pieces for the 1st-2nd grade room (which I for some reason have no pictures of). We chose to make the ceiling puzzle pieces all different shapes because they didn’t need to fit together. We painted them four bright colors on both sides to add some color to the room and hung them from the ceiling using clear fishing line. The four large puzzle pieces in the 1st-2nd grade room were each painted a different color and attached to small wooden stands like the puzzle pieces on the stage so we could move them in and out of the room each week (we are portable in that room).

If you loved this set design, make sure you check out the Puzzling Parables Curriculum Series!