Tag Archives: youth ideas

Christmas Photo Scavenger Hunt

December 8, 2005 kensapp Leave a comment

Materials
Digital camera for each team

Game Preparation
Set a time for groups to be back then send them off to the local mall or shopping center to get the Christmas Photos.

Activity
This is a photo scavenger hunt where participants must take a snapshot of the entire group that satisfies each description in the list. Add point values based upon the difficulty of the photos. Collect the photos at the end for a wonderful slideshow or customised Christmas Cards.

RULES
1. One picture per item on the list.
2. 500 points off for each minute after 10:00pm you are late.
3. Everyone in your team has to be seen in each picture.
4. Words written on paper or drawings will not be counted if used instead of a place or object.
5. Be respectful in everything you do.
6. Sponsors have the authority to veto any picture situation for whatever reason.
7. Stay with your sponsor at all times and obey him/ her.
8. No collaborating with other teams.
9. Your sponsor is your official photographer.
10. Winners will be announced after the film is developed and be given special prizes.
11. For each non-group member in a picture, a bonus of 50 points is added.

ITEMS
(Assign points to these based on the difficulty to accomplish each)

Scavenger Hunt Items
* Picture of your team with everyone licking a candy cane.
* Picture of your team reading the Christmas story in their Bibles.
* Picture of your team in a snowy looking landscape- White Christmas
* Picture of your team with a guy on the team in a red or green dress
* Picture of your team all wearing hats and one wearing a Santa Hat
* Picture of your team with Christmas lights
* Picture of your team all wearing red and green ties
* Picture of your team with a snowman
* Picture of your team with a pet wearing a Christmas Bow
* Picture of your team with someone gift wrapped… bow and all
* Picture of your team with Santa in the background
* Picture of your team with someone sitting on Santa’s knee
* Picture of the team with red noses like Rudolph the rednosed reindeer and standing next to a reindeer
* Picture of your team around a Christmas tree with lights
* Picture of your team with a Christmas angel
* Picture of the team with everyone wearing shaving cream Santa beards
* Picture of your team with elves
* Picture of your team posing as a nativity scene
* Picture of your team with a Manger scene – The Real meaning of Christmas
* Picture of your team singing Christmas carols to a church member
* Picture or your team presenting a Christmas gift to a total stranger
* Picture of your team donating to a worthy charity.
* Picture of your team with the parent’s of someone on your team.
* Picture of your team with a church staff member
* Picture of your team with one member dressed up like Santa!
* Picture of a team member on Santa’s lap with everyone else crowded around
* Picture of your team with all the younger brothers/ sisters of someone on your team.
* Picture of your team with a church in the background
* Picture of your team all hugging each other
* Picture of your of one of your team members kissing a Christmas mannequin in a clothes store while the rest of the team looks on. Get permission first!
* Picture of your team spelling out the Word JESUS using your bodies.

See Conducting Scavenger Hunts for help, Hints, Safety Considerations, Rules, and other useful information to make your scavenger hunt a wild success!

Creative Scavenger Hunts: Once Lost, Now Found

is a 160 page e-book that explains everything you need to know to easily plan your very own scavenger hunt: Item Lists, Rules, Riddles, Safety Tips, Guidelines, Scoring, Tips for Facilitators and MORE! There are more than 50 complete ideas (scavenger hunts, photo hunts, video hunts, amazing race, etc.) to use at home, around the neighborhood, at the mall, in the park, on the beach, at church, and around town!

=> Tell me more about the Creative Scavenger Hunts

Christmas Collection
Games and Activities helping youth discover the Reason for the Season.Get more than 200 creative ideas for planning a Youth Christmas celebration or Christmas Party party. You can immediately download my best Christmas Icebreakers, games, illustrations, Christmas activity ideas AND MUCH MORE in a useful ebook!

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Game Ideas

Christmas Gift Exchange #1

December 8, 2005 kensapp Leave a comment

Materials
A gift from each participant. Each person brings a wrapped unmarked gift. You may choose a cost limit or have them bring a white elephant gift.

How gifts are exchanged

A. Everyone sits in a circle and the gifts are placed in a pile in the middle. Write numbers from 1-??, depending on the number of gifts, on small pieces of paper. Do not number the gifts. Fold the papers and place them in a hat or some other container. Each person randomly picks a paper (number) from the hat.

B. Start with the person holding number “1”. He/she picks a gift and opens it. Then the person holding number “2” can either pick a gift from the pile or take the gift away from number one. If a person has his gift taken away, he may immediately choose an unopened gift from the pile and open it.

C. “3” can either take a gift from numbers 1 or 2 or pick one from the pile to open.

D. There is no limit on the number of gifts one person can open if others continue to take the gift they have opened.

E. Each gift can only change hands three times through out the game. The person with the gift on the third exchange keeps it.

F. Each person ends up with only one gift. A person may end up with the same gift they brought.

Variation
Play the game without opening the gifts till the end when everyone has a gift in hand and all the exchanging is over.

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Game Ideas

Wisemen Followed the Star

December 7, 2005 kensapp Leave a comment

Materials
Large gold stars, preferably self-sticking; Hide the stars in various locations around the room.

Game Play
Tell the participants that there are stars hidden around the room. The person who comes closest to the correct number of stars (or correctly identifies the locations of the most stars) wins a prize.

Variation
Hide one star for each participant. Participants must find a star and place it on themself before thay can be seated.

Use this Christmas Game as an introduction to the wisemen who looked for the star in order to find Jesus.

Scripture
Matthew 2:1-11; Micah 5:2; Psalm 72:10,11,15

Game Ideas

Christmas Symbol Exchange

December 7, 2005 kensapp Leave a comment

Materials
A semi-circle of chairs with one chair for each participant

Game play
The group sits in a semi-circle. “Christmas” sits on one end of the semi-circle. At the other end of the semi-circle sits the “scrooge.” All the seats in between belong to different Christmas symbols, such as star, manger, shepherd. etc. You can assign the names or allow youth to choose their own. (Use the items from the Christmas Bingo game for ideas for various Christmas symbols)

Once everyone has identified the Christmas symbol for their seat, the game begins. The person sitting in the “Christmas” chair begins the game by calling out “Christmas” and then another Christmas symbol in the group (e.g “Manger”). The person sitting in the “Manger” seat then calls out “Manger” and another Christmas symbol in the group, (e.g. “Elf”) and so it continues.

There are a couple of types of mistakes that will penalize participants:
1. You don’t notice your symbol has been called and delay too long
2. You call the same symbol that just immediately called you
3. You call out a Christmas symbol that was not used in the group

The Penalty
If someone makes a mistake, they have to swap places with the person next to them, moving down towards the “Scrooge”. They then take on the Christmas symbol of the seat they now occupy, and the person who moves up a place takes over their Christmas symbol. The aim is to move all the way up to take the place of “Christmas.” “Christmas” then starts the next round until someone else makes a mistake.

Variation
Instead of calling out the names of the Christmas symbols, have participants create an action. The wilder the various actions, the more fun!

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Game Ideas

Christmas Stocking 3-Legged Race

December 7, 2005 kensapp Leave a comment

Materials
Heavy duty Christmas stocking that is big enough to put two persons feet into. One stocking for each team.

Activity
This is a normal three legged race, except a Christmas stocking is used to bind the two legs together. The two race to a destination and back. The next two persons on the team then put on the stocking and race. The first team that completes the relay wins.

Game Ideas

Christmas Snowball Fight

December 7, 2005 kensapp Leave a comment

Materials
Old Newspapers

Activity
Divide the room in half and mark it with tape or chalk. Give each team a stack of old newspapers. with an equal number of sheets. In a specified amount of time (3 minutes) the teams make as many snowballs as they can by wadding up a whole sheet of paper and throwing it at those on the opposite side of the room. At the end of the time limit, the team who has the least number of snowballs on thier side wins.

Variation
For younger children use cotton balls or white styrofoam peanuts instead of newspaper. Snowballs can be made of a variety of different materials. Cut each leg from a pair of white nylons into three or four pieces, fill each with fiber fill stuffing, and knot the open ends. You can also use rolled-up socks, toilet paper, etc.

Game Ideas

Christmas Scents

December 7, 2005 kensapp Leave a comment

Materials
Small numbered jars with the lids removed and filled with items to identify by smell. (Wrap them in red and green cloth to allow the smell to escape yet keep away prying eyes.)

Use things like: candy canes, ginger, candles, cinnamon, evergreen, egg nog, cookies, etc.

Activity
Fill small jars with items to identify only by smell. The object is to see who can identify what’s in the jar. The participant that correctly identifies the most scents wins.

Icebreakers

Christmas Carol Sing-a-long

December 6, 2005 kensapp Leave a comment

Materials
A list of Christmas Carols written in groups of two or more on slips of paper.
(see Christmas Carol Pictionary for a list of some common Christmas Carols and songs.

Activity
1. Write the names of the Christmas songs on individual slips of paper (There should be at least 2 slips for each song or more–More is good for larger groups and more difficult).
2. Then put as many slips of songs as you have people in a bag and mix them up really good.
3. Let each person draw a slip of paper out. They are not allowed to show it to anyone.
4. They must begin humming the song on their slip of paper when you say “go”.

The objective of the game is to locate the other person(s) humming the same song that you are humming. When the partners find everyone in their group they hold hands and begin to sing the words to their song!

Holiday Collection
Games and Activities in Celebration of common Holidays.

Creative Holiday Ideas has over 300 pages of ideas to help you plan your next New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Halloween or Fall Festival, and Thanksgiving event. If you’ve ever wondered what you’re going to do for all these holidays and how you’re going to do it, this resource is for you.

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Icebreakers

Christmas Card Puzzler

December 6, 2005 kensapp Leave a comment

Materials
Christmas Cards (2 copies of each card)

Activity
Use this as an icebreaker / crowdbreaker to divide your youth into teams at a Christmas Party:
1. Select the front panels of several Christmas with different pictures and cut them into pieces. Use 2 identical Christmas cards for each group. Each group will have a different card.
2. Cut one of the 2 identical cards into pieces. The number of pieces is determined by the number of people you want to have on each team.
3. Write a question on the back of each piece. Questions should be along the lines of: “What is your favorite part of the Christmas Story?”, “What is the most meaningful Christmas Gift you ever received?”, etc.
4. The other uncut card is placed on the wall or at each table so that youth will be able to find their group later by comparing their pieces with the visible cards.
5. One good idea is the keep the peices of each individual card separate until needed. Once everyone has arrived, place the necessary number of cards based on the number of people in a bag and mix them up.
6. When each person enters the room they are given a piece of the cards that have been cut into jigsaw puzzles, with the question at the back of each. The objective of the game is to ask people the question found on the puzzle piece and find the rest of the people whose pieces combine to form 1 card.
7. Youth may only reveal their puzzle peice after they have answered the questions. They then test to see if the peices fit together. If they do then they stay together and find other people to ask questions and check. Once the puzzle is completely solved, only then are participants allowed to find out their respective table or location to group together by matching the picture of the puzzle with the uncut version.

Holiday Collection
Games and Activities in Celebration of common Holidays.

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Game Ideas

Christmas Chocolate Bar Scramble

December 6, 2005 kensapp Leave a comment

Materials
Chocolate bar (wrapped in multiple layers of Christmas paper with lots of tape), dice, a knife and fork, and various items for youth to wear including heavy winter gloves, a santa hat, a broad black belt, a red santa coat and a pillow.

Activity
Place the well wrapped chocolate bar in the center of the table. Each person sitting around the table takes a turn at rolling the dice. The 1st person who rolls a six gets to start eating the candy bar — but only after he puts on a pair of heavy winter gloves, the santa cap, the santa coat stuffed with the pillow and held in place with the black belt, and finally runs once around the table singing “Jingle Bells” can Santa start on the chocolate; Then with only with a knife and fork he must remove the wrapper and cut and eat the chocolate one square at a time. Add or remove whatever steps you want to make the game easier or more difficult.

While Santa is getting ready (according to the instructions above) to eat the candy bar, the group keeps taking turns rolling the dice. If someone rolls a six, then the person who rolled the six before him relinquishes his right to the candy bar, and the 2nd person becomes the new Santa and must try to eat the candy before someone else rolls six. The game is over when the candy bar is finished.

Application
While this game is very difficult, it is not impossible. Yet for us to go to heaven based on our works IS impossible. That is why Jesus was sent to us as the greatest gift, as the Savior of the world.

Creative Youth ideas: 1700+ Resources for youth leaders, pastors, ministers to help plan camps, retreats, and meetings using games, illustrations, Children's Worship, Bible Studies, object lessons, sermons, creative ideas,creative activities