Games: Group Bags and Quick Easter Ideas Sean Cramer
Spring usually creates a temporary sense of rejuvination, as people are reexperiencing loved outdoor hobbies, and as others are taking advantage of the climate to be more active. Use this season with your youth to restart passion and excitement for the various opportunities your congregation has to offer to grow, learn, and receive God's grace. The following ideas take advantage of the new season.
Group Bags
One of my new favorite lawn games is bags, where players toss bean bags onto a playing board, with a hole cut in the top. This game adapts it for groups.
Supplies:
Six beanbags, three each of two different colors (swipe them from a bags game)
Two beach towels
Two hula hoops
Twelve cones
Set-Up:
Set up one of the boards as follows:
Mark a rectangle with 6 cones, or 3 rows of 2.
At the far end of the rectangle, set a hula hoop
Repeat the process at the other end, so that you can stand in one hula hoop, and look down the range to the other hoop.
Place the playing areas so that the entire playing space is roughly 50 feet across.
Divide the group into 2 teams, and divide each team into two groups, with each group at a board.
This site will also give a diagram of how to set up the field.
When play starts, one group should place a beanbag into their towel, and launch the bag to the other board.
The other team launches one of their bags, and teams rotate til each team has launched three bags.
If a bag lands in the rectangle, it counts as 1 point, and if it lands in the hula hoop, it counts as 5.
At the end of the round, players score their bags, and the teams subtract the larger total from the lesser. The team with the higher score gets to "bank" the difference of points.
The other two groups now take turns, launching their bags across.
Play ends at 21 points.
Extra Ideas:
With a larger group, have a tournament with brackets.
Include this with a variety of other lawn games, and a cook-out.
Quick Easter Ideas:
Have a Hoppy Relay: Players hop from one end of playing area to the other, then hop back, tagging the next in line.
Do an eco friendly egg toss, giving each pair of partners a plastic egg weighted with silly putty, or similar heavy material.
Players form two lines, with partners standing apart from other.
On go, players toss their eggs to their partners. Any pair that has a dropped or cracked egg is removed from play.
Remaining players take a step back and toss their eggs again.
Play continues til one pair remains.
Host a blind tasting, having individuals taste a regular candy versus its "Easter-themed" version. See if they can guess which is the normal version.
Discuss the origins of Easter as an American Holiday (additional research is required).
Read the Passion story.
Sean Cramer graduated as a DCE from Concordia University, River Forest and served as a Program Assistant/Associate at Camp Lone Star in La Grange, TX. After moving back to his hometown near Rockford, IL, Sean currently works with Developmentally Disabled individuals. Aside from awaiting a Call in professional ministry again, Sean enjoys volunteering, reading, playing games, exercising, and observing his dog be absolutely resistant to any new tricks.
