Happy Meals in a Blender with a Twist

We've all blended up gross stuff and drank it (or made the new leaders drink it) at club.  I've heard of skits/games where McDonald's Happy Meals are blended up and swallowed, but I just came across a post by Liz where she describes a game that's a little more detailed than that.

There was a nugget meal, cheese burger and the unfortunate fish filet. A student was assigned to each of us and if they correctly guessed the ingredients to the shake, the leader had to chug it. Oh, that Cindy!!! Why did she have to guess nuggets. The fact that the shake smelled exactly like chicken nuggets may have been a dead giveaway. After the successful guessing, we had to chug the contents of our glasses. In case you were wondering fries, chicken nuggets and Sprite don't taste nearly as good as one. It was sick. I was mainly grossed out by the chicken scent. Luckily I didn't have to chug it all. I think I won since the burger guy and fish guy weren't drinking near as much.

That got me thinking.  What about doing food from different restaurants?  Pizza Hut, McDonald's, Burger King, Bob's Sushi Bar.

Successfully Leading Games & Mixers

Jonathan McKee gives the 7 Deadly Sins of Game Leading over at the Source for Youth Ministry. They are extremely helpful reminders of how important the little things are when you're trying to be excellent.

I prefer to be a little more positive, sort of like Paula Abdul. I've translated these into an optimist's language.

1. Come up with some creative transitions to lead into games. Avoid telling the kids you're gonna play a game.
2. Prepare, prepare, prepare. Stop and think through exactly how the game will go. Anticipate problems.
3. Play along with the kids.
4. Explain how to play in less than 30 seconds. Practice doing this before hand. Try explaining it to the other leaders to see if it makes sense. Control the room. If the kids are talking, make them sit down so you only have to explain it once.
5. Split up teams quickly. Again, think through this ahead of time.
6. Have a personality & have fun. If you don't, get someone else to lead the game.
7. Make sure everyone can be involved either by playing or by seeing what's going on. If you're doing an up front game, try to elevate the people if they're doing something on the floor. Try using a table.

Wordless Wednesday - Florida Snowball Fight

 

We willed each napkin with 1/4 cup of flour, pulled the four corners together and twisted the top.  After making about 500 of these, we were ready to throw them at people for a 70 degree snow ball fight.

Check out more Wordless Wednesday pictures at 5 Minutes of Mom, Sunny Day Today Mama, Seven Clown Circus, Experimental Mommy, & Mom Knows It All.

Pass The Spam

This is one of the most simple mixers, but it went really great. We took spam out of 2 cans and split the room in 2. Each group formed a circle & got one of the spams (I have no idea what you call a block of spam. Probably a block of spam.)

This is just a game of hot potato but with spam. When the music stops, whoever has it has to take a bite.

Here are a few things that made is successful.

1. Everyone's touching it. That's gross on a few levels.
2. Demonstrate the size of a bite & explain the game while they were all sitting down before forming the circles.
3. Emphasize that the spam has to be passed from person to person and not thrown.
4. Challenge them to be big men & women about eating it rather than chuck it across the room or drop it on the floor when the music stopped.
5. Put a leader inside each circle to monitor the passing and judge who has it when the music stops.
6. Give that leader a camera. We got some great shots of kids passing it and of the kids taking a bite.
7. Don't overdo it. 4 - 5 times is good. You could announce that for the last one the person has to finish it off. Probably won't happen, but it ups the level of urgency to not get stuck with it.

Izzy Dizzy - New Club Character

A few weeks ago at club planning, we were filling in our semester spreadsheet and were thinking of mixers.
All the old ideas came out.  Knight/Mount/Carry, Tape Shapes, etc.  One of our leaders said we needed some new ideas, so we sat in silence and thought about it.
Then, it hit us.  What if we just put a new spin on the old games.  And Izzy Dizzy was born.
We've had her in club twice and she's a huge hit.  Here's how it works.

1. 2 Leaders introduce a mixer to the kids and get ready to play.
2. Just before we begin to play, one of the leaders says that we do this game every year and it's boring.
3. Then her music starts.  We're using "You Spin Me Right Round" (I think that's what it's called).
4. Izzy comes out with tie dye shirt, propeller hat, and whatever else she can that spins.
5. She tells us her name is Izzy Dizzy and she comes to club to make games fun (something like that) and ends with "off the fashizzy".
6. She then tells us we need to put a new spin on things.
7. We ask her what kind of new thing we can do with this boring game & she looks at us like we're plain dumb.
8. "No." she says.  "You just put a spin on it."
9. Then she demonstrates how to spin properly and we play the game.
10. Kids are required to spin until they have to do whatever they have to do for the game.

It's fun, because everyone bumps into each other and everyone's dizzy.

Fish Tug-o-War

My area took kids to Southwind this weekend for our first annual Polar Bear weekend. A trip that has absolutely nothing to do with polar bears, but everything to do with a weekend.

The program characters were "unconventional" fishermen fisherpeople so some of the games included fish. One I hadn't seen before was Fish Tug-o-War.

Here's how it worked.

• 4 Guys & 4 Girls
• 4 Dead, Frozen Fish (Completely intact) - You could probably use 1 fish, although more adds to the effect and the smell.
• Have 2 of the guys each hold on to one fish. When the music starts, they try to pull on it until one person pulls it out of the other person's hand. Kind of like a smelly wishbone type thing.
• Then, have the other 2 girls or guys play and the do a championship round for each gender.

Note: The bigger the fish, the better.

More Than I Knew

I've visited Help for YL Leaders NOW on several occasions, but I don't think I ever realized the value of what Sean has posted there.

He has an entire category of club plans in Word format along with the posts that describe the Club. This is an excellent resource.

I've been looking over a bunch of them and these are a few of my favorites.

• Tick Tac Toe Club
• Mustache Club
• Turkey Club

And this post is about getting the most out of the blog. Such good stuff.