Christmas Party Game Description
This Creative Christmas Party Idea requires participants to dress up as Santa.

Game Materials
A Christmas Santa suit should consist of a minimum of:

• Santa Hat
• Thick winter Gloves (red if possible)
• A heavy Coat (red?)
• a very large pair of black boots

Optional items:

• A large red sack stuffed with newspaper
• White cotton for a beard
• A bell to ring

Note: You can also rent two Santa costumes from a costume shop if you have the money or have one of the more adept ladies in your church sew one for you. Make sure the costume is extra large so that all your participants can easily fit into it. Whoever heard of a skinny Santa Claus?

 

Game Preparation
Lay out two sets of Christmas Santa Costumes – One for each team.

Game Play

• Line the youth, children or adult participants up into or two teams behind the starting line. Across the room are two chairs with a Santa suit laid out on each.
• At the starting signal, the first person on each team runs to the chair, puts on the Christmas Santa suit and says “Ho! Ho! Ho!”
• They then take all the items off and run back to tag the next person in line.
• Each person repeats these actions until all have had a turn being Santa.
• The team who finishes first is the winner.

Christmas Collection
Games and Activities helping youth discover the Reason for the Season.

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Thanks to Kids Party Paradise for the inspiration for this idea. You can get everything you need for your Christmas Party from their wonderful website!”

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Game Description
The trust fall is one of the most dramatic trust games. Use this group building game to build community, teamwork, and trust within the group as members rely on the protection of the group to prevent themselves from being injured.

Game Materials

• A raised platform of some type – a stump, small wall, table, ladder, etc. The platform should be no higher than 6 feet (less than 2 meters) and at least the height of about 4 feet (about 1 meter).
• There should be 10-12 individuals standing on level ground to serve as catchers.

Game Preparation
This game requires a minimum of 10-12 persons to have appropriate protection. Impress upon participants that this is not a time for joking around, but a time to be serious and inspire trust in each other. They need to be encouraging and affirming, helping to alleviate the fear associated with trusting someone else.

Game Play

1. Begin by asking a youth to stand on the raised platform from which they will fall backward into the arms of a prepared group of spotters.
2. The person falling should keep his or her arms crossed over their chest with the palms gripping opposite shoulders. When falling they should not bend their knees as it concentrates the force of the fall on a few people making catching more difficult.
3. The two lines of catchers stand shoulder to shoulder facing one another. Hands are to the side with the inside of forearms extended, palms face up so that hands are alternated and juxtaposed in order to provide a secure landing area. It is preferablle that the catchers who are facing each other do not grasp hands. It is not necessary and a knocked head WILL result as the weight of the person falling will pull the two catchers holding hands together. If the group chooses to lock arms together, do so by gripping the wrist of the person opposite, not the hand. Do not cross arms as this can injure the falling volunteer.
4. Assign one person in the group to stand on the platform and with the volunteer about to fall or to be in very close proximity. This adult leader should make sure the faller is:
   • spacially aligned with the catchers:
   • has hands across chest in the correct position
   • tilting his or her head slightly back as a means to keep the body rigid so that they do not bend at the knees.

   He should also rearrange the spotters if there appears to be an appreciable size or strength discrepancy in opposing catchers.

5. The adult leader asks the catchers if they are ready. When they are ready they say “fall” and the person falling says “falling” and falls.

Discussion Ideas

• Trust: How did it feel be forced to rely on someone else? What fears did you have? Did you trust they would prevent you from harm? How does this relate to trusting God with our lives?
• Protection: In this game we have to protect someone in the group from injury. Do we as a group have an obligation to look out for each other? What are some of the ways we can protect each other in our lives?
• Helping Those who Fall: What are some ways we can help to catch those who fall? We are surrounded by fallen humanity who need help. How can we help? What can we do when a Christian falls?
• Reliance: In this group, the person in the center had to rely on the group. What are some of the ways we have to rely on each other in the Christian life? Do we need each other?

Icebreakers Ahead: Take It To the Next Level

This 170 page resource not only provides 52 of the world’s most popular group icebreaker activities and games, but also includes lesson ideas and discussion questions to smoothly transition into conversations about the issues common to most groups.

Click here to find out how to get your hands on this incredible resource!

Game Description
Like the classic Cinderella story, in this icebreaker / crowdbreaker, guys must identify the girls by a shoe and could be used as an object lesson to discuss how we often judge people by appearances.

Game Materials

• large sheet or curtain
• twine or rope

 

Game Preparation
Suspend the sheet or curtain across the room using the twine or rope. The bottom of the sheet should be a couple of inches above the floor so that only a person’s feet are visible.

Game Play

• As each girl arrives, ask her to remove her right shoe.
• Send all the girls behind the curtain and randomly distribute the shoes among the guys.
• Line up the girls behind the sheet or curtain that has been suspended across the room. Only the girls’ feet should be visible at the bottom.
• Bring the guys in and appoint them to the task of locating the girl which matches with the shoe they have been given. Award the guys that choose correctly.
• The guy and his cinderella are then partners for the next activity.

 

Variations

1. Do the same thing with all the guys, but leave them in their socks for a smelly variation. “I recognize that odor.”
2. Mix girls and guys behind the curtain. You might call it “Cinderellas and Princes” so the guys don’t feel like they are being grouped with the girls as a “Cinderella.”

 

Optional Discussion

• How did you feel being identified by your feet?
• What are some ways that we typically identify others? (Job, school, hobbies, nationality or race, size, personality, clique, etc)
• Do we treat others differently based on their characteristics?
• Is it ok to treat different people differently?
• Do we exclude people from our youth group by our actions or attitudes?
• Is favoritism acceptable?

Closing Application
In Leviticus 19:15 it says “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.” This doesn’t mean that we won’t have people we get along with better than others. It means that we do not judge others differently based upon certain characteristics. The New Testament makes it even clearer by saying that we should not judge or we will be judged (Matthew 7:1-5). In John 7:21-24, Jesus tells the people to “Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment.” In 1 Samuel 16:7 we are told that God does not look at appearances, but the heart. We are free to choose our friends as we see fit, yet at the same time we know that Jesus, when he was upon this earth did not exclude those from his social circle because of their social status or circumstances. He welcomed sinners and tax collectors, the great as well as the lowly and everyone in between. Yet he also had the inner circle of disciples and among those a closer bond with three of them.

MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”
200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.
Learn More…

Game Description
In this game, participants are divided into opposing teams and must “capture their flag” to win.

Game Materials
Flag (Can be a cloth, frisbee, or almost anything easily carried by a participant)

Game preparation
This game requires a large outdoor play area such as a public park or camp setting.

Game Play

1. The playing area needs to be divided into 2 approximately equal sections (be very specific about all the boundaries!), with some sort of dividing line down the middle. The dividing line can be a sidewalk, a string across the ground, a chalked line or simply an aimginary line between two objects.
2. Divide the group into two teams.
3. Each of the 2 teams should be allowed to designate it’s own space anywhere within their area to place the flag. They must also designate a prison area for captured prisoners to remain within. Both should be out in the open (not hidden behind trees or in bushes).
4. The game is played with flags or objects that the opposing team must seize and deliver to their own area. A frisbee is easier to toss to a teammate so in order to balance that out you might want to have a rule that as soon as it touches the ground, the entire team must cross back over the central territory line before trying to retrieve it again. The object is simply to capture the flags from the other team and bring them back to your own side without getting caught.
5. Each flag has an imaginary boundary around it of 1 to 5 meters depending on how difficult you wish to make the game as a safe zone. Once a player enters the safe zone they cannot be tagged. Team members cannot enter this area to tag them.
6. Anyone tagged on the opposition side of the field becomes a prisoner (It works best if prisoners must be escorted back to the prison – this prevents one person from taking more than one prisoner at a time).
7. Prisoners may be set free by a teammate touching either the prisoner or the jail – you can choose whether one person can free a single person or is allowed to free the entire jail.
8. Once prisoners are (tagged) freed, they (and the person freeing them) get a free walk back to their side.
9. The leader may also choose to call a jail break on occasion, which would set all the prisoners free on both sides.
10. Once the flag is captured by a team and delivered to their side of the play area, the game is over.

Variation

• Have everyone wear a dark colored shirt. You can make “snow balls” (Put 2/3 cup flour in a nylon stocking (pantyhose) and tying it into a small ball.. You can get about 4 out of one leg of panty hose.) Socks can also be used but are not as effective.
• In order to capture a person from the other side youth must use the snow balls as bullets. When hit with one there is a telltale white circle on the dark colored shirts. Once a person is hit with a snow ball he is captured and must go to jail.

Icebreakers Ahead: Take It To the Next Level

This 170 page resource not only provides 52 of the world’s most popular group icebreaker activities and games, but also includes lesson ideas and discussion questions to smoothly transition into conversations about the issues common to most groups.

Click here to find out how to get your hands on this incredible resource!