Materials
A compass

Activity
1. As a small game stand in the center of the room as the target. Students must arrange themselves in lines next to you to form a cross “+”.
2. Designate each direction of the cross as according to the directions of the compass (North, South, East, West).
3. Using the compass, let youth rotate themselves so that the correct line is facing north. Ask them to freeze and take note of their orientation in the room.
4. As the target you must now move to another place in the room.
5. On your signal participants are to reform the compass at the new location, aligning themselves in the correct directions.
6. First line of the cross to get in the correct position wins, making sure they are all facing their respective directions of the compass.
7. To make it more difficult, stand in a doorway, next to a wall, squat under a table, etc.

Debrief
After the game, ask youth/ children to point to north at a given signal. Check their alignment with the compass. Then try to confuse the youth / children by turning round, going to a corner or standing on a chair and asking where north is from those positions.
1. Whatever position we are in, a compass will direct us accurately to north.
2. What are some things that people use to find direction in life?
3. How accurate are these guides?
4. What directions are you aligning your life to?
5. How does a sense of direction help us in the twists and turns of life?

Application
The Holy Spirit is our inner ‘guide’. (John 16:13-14) The Holy Spirit keeps us on the right path in life by always pointing us to Jesus.

Finding Direction in life helps us to navigate its twists and turns.

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.

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Matthew 8:19, John 12:26

Activity
Play a game of “Simon Says”? It’s an easy game. You do all the things Simon says you may do, but if Simon does not say that you can do something and you do it, then you are out.

Debrief
“Simon says” is an easy game as long as you follow. Following is the key to success. If you don’t follow then you are out. It is like that with Jesus too. We need to follow him. If we want to know if something is OK or not we can ask ourself what Jesus would do. If Jesus would do it then we can do it.

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.

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Objective
Making wise decisions involves knowing scripture.

Preparation
Draw a grid representing floor tiles on a piece of paper. You may choose to have a 15 by 15 square grid or larger. Mark a path through the grid of squares with each successive step touching the one before it either adjacent or diagonally. Count the number of squares for the correct path and make a piece of paper with a Bible scripture written on it for each square. For the rest, rewrite some of the scriptures so that they are not correct. Use scriptures that are well known and provide wisdom in making decisions. Proverbs has a lot of good choices. When in the classroom, lay out the peices of paper on floor tiles according to your grid.

Game Play
Divide the class into teams. The object is for each team to get its members through the mind-field without losing people. The group to get the largest number of students through the mind-field wins.

Kids decide whether a square is a mine by reading the scripture verses and deciding if it is correct or not. If it is correct it is a safe square to step on. If it is not correct it is a mine. If they step on a mine, they lose one member and another kid can try.

The first team to get across with least casualties wins.

Debrief
Scripture is our guide through life’s minefields. Wrong choices injure us. Correct choices lead us closer to God! Discuss how the scriptures you used help guide us down the right paths in life.

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.

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Materials
Stamp ink pad, small pieces of paper for each youth’s thumbprint.

Preparation
If your youth are not skittish about having their thumbprints taken, have each youth create a thumbprint on a piece of paper. Photocopy these into a grid and have a contest to see who can identify which thumbprint belongs to who. Whoever correctly identifies the most thumbprints wins a prize.

Variation – Thumbprint Bingo
Take the thumprints on onion skin paper, tracing paper, or tissue paper. Photocopy 5 rows of thumbprints in 5 columns on pieces of paper to create bingo grids. Then put all the thumbprints in a sack and pull them out and project them onto an OHP. First youth to form 5 in a row in any direction wins. (If you want to make it easier, place a number on each thumbprint as they can be difficult to identify.

Debrief
Each one of our fingerprints is different. Psalm 119:73 tells us God made us special so we could serve him in different ways. Just as there are many different fingerprints there are many different ways for us to serve God. Each of us must try to discover how God uniquely want’s us to serve him.

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.

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Materials
Obtain some flexible rulers or make them from cardboard. As an added variation, make a couple of the rulers with incorrect measurement markings.

Preparation
Make a list of measurements of various items found in the youth room or throughout the church.

Activity
Participants must scour the room and find the objects that match the measurements… first to get them all correct gets a prize.

Debrief
Have youth write the standards of measurement for our lives from God’s Word and scriptures we can use to measure our lives against God’s standards. You might give them some helpful scriptures to write on their rulers. Talk about how those standards are corrupted when the rules (rulers) are wrong. Then everything gets measured incorrectly. Those that had rulers with the wrong measurements will find it difficult to find any of the objects.

Application
When our measurements of obedience, ourselves (pride), expectations (jealousy), comparisons with others, and timing (patience) are wrong it messes up our results. Our standards for measurement must be exact and based on God’s Word or every measurement we make will be wrong. God’s Word is to be the ruler for our life. When we use other things as rulers our measurements come out wrong.

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

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…

Central Truth
God wants us to help when we see others in trouble

Materials
1. Large open area…
2. Identifiers for participants as follows:
white armband – sheep
Black armband – wolf
Large Doggie bone on a string – Sheep Dog

Scripture
Read the 23rd psalm or have a participant quote it. Sometimes we call the 23rd Psalm “the Good Shepherd Psalm” because it teaches us that God is like a shepherd and we’re like sheep. We aren’t told if sheep dogs were used in Bible times, but today it’s very common for shepherds to have sheep dogs.

Teaching Activity
Play a game of tag with the following rules:

Setup
1. All sheep must wear a white armband. The only sound they can make is a “baa”
2. Wolves must wear a black armband – there should be two or more wolves depending on the size of the group. The only sounds they can make are a growl and snarl!
3. Sheepdogs wear a big bone around their neck. Get a large rawhide bone from your pet store or make a large bone from a piece of posterboard. There should be two or more sheep dogs depending on the size of the group. The only sounds they can make is to “bark” like a dog.
4. Designate an out of bounds area for those that are eliminated.

Game Play
1. Wolves may tag sheep. If tagged they are out of the game.
2. Only Sheep dogs may tag a wolf. If tagged they are out of the game.
3. If two or more wolves tag a sheepdog at the same time the sheep dog is out of the game.
3. If the wolves are eliminated the sheep win the game.
4. If the sheep are eliminated the wolves win the game.
5. Vary the number of sheepdogs and wolves to change the game play. 6. You might give sheepdogs some time to develop strategies to protect the sheep while the wolves develop their strategies to attack the sheep.

Debrief
1. What strategies did the wolves have to eliminate the sheep? How are these similar/ different from Satan’s strategies? (See also Matthew 7:15, Matthew 10:16, Acts 20:29, 1 peter 5:8)

2. What does a shepherd do? How do sheepdogs help a shepherd? What function did the sheep dogs serve? How are sheep dogs similar/ different from spiritual leaders and mentors in the church?

Key Points
A. We’re all God’s sheep, and Jesus is our Good Shepherd. But sometimes God needs us to be sheep dogs.
B. Sometimes sheep wander away or are separated from the flock and become more vulnerable.
C. Shepherds and sheepdogs help keep the flock together and protect the sheep, but they can also be attacked.

Twas a sheep that strayed away

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.

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Materials
Nails, wood.

Activity
Ask kids what can be done with nails and wood. Ask them to give some examples of what you could build.

Debrief
Explain that nails and wood are very important to easter too.
– Does anyone know why?

Tell the story of Christ’s crucifixion. Then teach children the sign language for “I Love You.” Explain that “I love you” was what Jesus was saying when he died on the cross.

Easter Collection

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Materials
Two large signs, one reading ‘possible’ and the other ‘impossible’

Your plan is to ask a number of questions to which the answer will be either ‘impossible’ or ‘possible’. Show the two cards and get two volunteers to come and hold up whichever the audience calls out. Be prepared with a list of questions. Here are some examples:

Can a fish live out of water?
Can a person get younger instead of older?
Can a person make a million dollars starting from just one dollar? Can a person turn his or her head 360 degrees?

You might like to look in the Guiness Book of Records for some unlikely stories which are actually true. Your final question will be: Can a dead person live again?

Debrief
God did the impossible by raising his Son Jesus from the dead. All who believe this to raise their hands.

Easter Collection

Get more than 80 creative ideas for planning a Youth Easter celebration or Easter Party. You can immediately download my best Easter Icebreakers, games, illustrations, Easter activity ideas AND MUCH MORE in a useful ebook!

=> Tell me more about the Easter Collection