2 Nemos & Thanksgiving Dinner

Nemo, the little guy/girl with one person being the face & legs and someone else being the hands has been a huge hit since I was in high school.  Around Thanksgiving time we brought out 2 of them acting as children and had them eating Thanksgiving Dinner with their parents.  We actually did it right at the beginning of Club since it had all the leaders participating and we didn't want to have excess set-up time during Club.


We prayed as a family & started eating.  The 2 children were pretty obnoxious and woudn 't eat their food.  Apparently it was too hard (even the stuffing).  So the mom decided to chew it up for them and spit it in their mouths straight out of Ace Ventura.  Right before she spit the stuff, the dad yells "No, that's disgusting.  We're not from Oviedo. (our rival high school).  I think I've got some old jars of baby food."

Dad pulls out the baby food (Thanksgiving stuff like sweet potatoes, turkey, etc.) and the kids go at it.  To be honest with you, I didn't know how funny the skit would be, but the over-exagerated eating of the baby food was absolutely hysterical.

The skit ends when the two children get into a fight over who gets the one jar of dessert, prunes.  The fight was a great ending, because food was flying everywhere.

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.

Human Pinata

Wrap a leader up in duct tape with the sicky side out. Stick candy all over the tape.

Then using ropes strung around his arms & legs (or a harness if you have one, which every good leader does) hang him from a tree.

One by one, let the kids beat the candy from the leader with a pool noodle.

If you want to do it inside a building, you could do something similar to this picture I got in an e-mail titled "Redneck Timeout".

Candid Camera Club

A friend of mine shared an awesome idea with me recently.

A few years ago, he got some administrators and a coach to help pull one over on some kids. He set up a camera in one of their offices and had them call a kid in and basically scare the crap out of them. You can use your imagination, but one kid was told that all of her college applications had been stolen and another kid was cut from the basketball team.

At just the right time, the administrator/coach points to the camera and says, "You're on Young Life Candid Camera".

Then you show the videos at club that night.

Note: All of it has to be done in one day, or word will spread & the kids will get suspicious.

Rindercella and the Prandsome Hince Skit

If you've ever wanted to learn this, here it is. It's a great way to break the ice before a talk.

Once upon a time in a coreign fountry there was a geautiful birl, whose name was Rindercella. And Rindercella had a mugly other and two sigly usters. Also in this coreign fountry there was a prandsome hince, and the prandsome hince was going to have a bancy fall. Rindercella’s mugly other and her two sigly usters went out and bought dancy fresses for the bancy fall, but poor Rindercella couldn’t go because she had nothing but rirty dags. So on the night of the bancy fall, Rindercella’s mugly other and her two sigly usters put on their dancy fresses and went to the bancy fall. And since poor Rindercella couldn’t go, she cat down and sried. Suddenly, her gairy fodmother appeared before her and touched her with her wagic mond and turned her into a peautiful brincess. Her gairy fodmother gave her a kig boach and hix sorces so Rindercella could go to the bancy fall. So off went Rindercella. When she got to the bancy fall, the prandsome hince met her at the door. He had watched her come up in her kig boach and hix sorses from a widden hindow. Rindercella and the prandsome hince danced all night long, and the prandsome hince lell in fove with Rindercella. When the prandsome hince was just about to quop the prestion, Rindercella heard the moke of stridnight, so she turned, straced down the rairs and when she got to the stottom blep she slopped her dripper. The next day the prandsome hince went all over his coreign fountry looking for the geautiful birl who had slopped her dripper. When he got to Rindercella’s house, he tried it on her mugly other, but it fidn't dit! He tried it on her two sigly usters, but it fidn't dit. And he tried it on Rindercella, and it fid dit! So they were mappily harried and lived appily ever hafter. Ehe Thend!

Bear Wake-Up Video

I posted this last year, but with the recent talk about skit ideas, I figured it'd make for some good inspiration. We showed up at 5:30am, put on our school mascot's bear suit, and whipped out a set of borrowed cymbals & our video camera.

Pardon the language, but you can't blame the kid.

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.

A Kid's First Time At Club

I came across this while looking around the internet & thought it was pretty encouraging. I won't link it, but here's the text.

Last night I went to this thing called Young Life. Basically, it was a big group of kids that got together at somebody's house to play games, sing, and talk about God a little bit. It was so much fun, and I'm really glad Morgan brought me with her. One of the games was dividing into two groups and putting as many clothes pins as possible on one person. Clothes pins on clothes were worth 1 point, and pins on skin were worth 2 points. We ended up winning, but I felt kind of bad for the girl with pins all over her, especially since there were so many on her face-ouch. Then they had 4 kids go up to the front (2 teams of 2) and one person had to chug a 2 liter bottle of Sprite zero while the other person was spinning in a circle. When the person got tired of chugging, they would switch. It was pretty funny to watch, but I'm glad I didn't have to do it. We also sang some old school songs- stuff like Backstreet Boys and Avril Leviegn (sp??). Of course, nobody is really a great singer, so the songs didn't sound so good, but everybody enjoyed it and ended up laughing. I hope that I can maybe go again, because it was so much fun. Everybody there was so nice too. (I wonder if this would be considered making my own excitement in life??)

Sounds like an awesome club (gonna use both those games), but what really stuck out to me was that this girl thought everyone was so nice. Talking to kids at camp, one of the things that always blows them away is how nice everyone is, how welcomed & loved they feel by the leaders, workcrew, & assigned team. It's great to see that we are creating that atmosphere back home in our clubs.

I think it's worth evaluating our clubs to see if we are creating atmospheres where everyone feels good to be there.

Saturday Night Live – Female Skit Ideas

We recently received an e-mail from Ashley, a Young Life Leader in Georgia asking about ideas for some good characters for females to do. My friend (and newest podcast team member) O.J. sent her an e-mail with some very good ideas. So good in fact that I thought it'd be good to post it here.

It might not be a bad idea to resurrect some old Saturday Night Live characters that are great for females. Most of them are old enough that kids will think you made them up.

Here are a couple of ideas..

1. Mary Catherine Gallagher - these aren't the best clips, but if you are not familiar with the character, it's a good start.





2. This is one that can be performed with all females or any mix of males and females. It's usually called "Master P Theater", sort of a take off on the old Masterpiece Theater that was on PBS. A person(s) comes in dressed all old and stuffy - think smoking jacket and pipe or any kind of golf clothes. The character then reads, in a serious manner, the lyrics to popular rap songs like "Soulja Boy". It's ridiculous to hear them in this setting. Even better is to do a few and then for the last one learn the dance and read the rap and then do the dance.

Human Christmas Trees

This is an annual tradition for our club.

1. Have plenty of Christmas Tree decorations - lights, tinsle, whatever. Glass bulbs break when they fall on tile, so be careful.
2. Bring up 3 kids to be trees and 2 kids to decorate each of the trees (that's 9 all together).
3. Play upbeat Christmas music while they decorate.
4. Plug all the lights in when the decorating is finished. A surge protector & extension cord usually come in handy.
5. Have the rest of the group judge the trees by applause.
6. The winning tree has to stand there for at least 15 minutes, if not the remainder of club, as the Young Life Christmas Tree.
7. If you want to be really cruel, get the big colored lights that get really, really hot.

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.

Turkey Bowling

Our annual tradition for this week's club is Turkey Bowling.

I'm sure there are several variations and things that work better than how we do it, but here's how we set it up and play.

1. Do it before club starts.
2. Use a large frozen turkey.
3. Set up 10, half-full 2 liter bottles on a sidewalk.
4. If you have plactic to lay down, use it. We've done it without, but the turkey will fall apart after a while.
5. Just have kids go one after another, bowling the turkey.

The Psychologist Skit

We just did this skit on Monday. It is my favorite to do and had the kids cracking up.

Mr. Tolson is knocking at the door on the door of Dr. Roberts, the in-house psychologist.

Dr. Roberts: Mr. Tolson

Mr. Tolson: Are you Dr. Roberts?

Dr. Roberts: Yes, come in. Please have a seat. Sorry to have to call you down here on such short notice, but your company asked me to give you a creativity test.

Mr. Tolson: I’ve never taken one of those before.

Dr. Roberts: Well, they’re pretty easy. Actually, they can be fun. Would you like a beverage?

Marshmallow Baseball

Here's a great game for everyone to be involved in, especially during the play-offs.

What you need:

1. Marshmallows
2. Wiffleball Bat
3. 2 Bases (we use pillows)

How to play:

1. Set up one base as a home plate and the other base straight ahead of home plate at the other end of the room.
2. Have the kids make an open area between the bases for the players to run.
3. Call up 3 girls to hit.
4. Have a leader pitch marshmallows underhand.
5. After the girl hits, she runs to the base and then back to home.
6. Guys try to throw the marshmallow to the catcher before the runner gets back home.
7. Girls in the crowd try to keep the guys from getting the marshmallow to the catcher.
8. After 3 girls have hit, call 3 guys up to do the same thing.
9. If they're having fun, keep playing.

Some extra fun: When the game was over, everyone was eating marshmallows. We tried to sing the entire next song with marshmallows in our mouths, without swallowing. We looked like a bunch of rabid dogs and sounded terrible.