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Hot air balloon
A game requiring young people to be awake and aware of what’s going on. Good luck…
10 mins
The simplest of these games are the ones without any kind of equipment or setup required. This is one of those games requiring nothing but your brains and guile.
Get your group sitting in a circle and explain that you are going to go on an imaginary hot air balloon ride and that as a group you need to decide what you are going to take with you. Get them to use the phrase ‘On my hot air balloon trip I will take...’ and suggest one thing they would take.
The leader then tells them whether or not what they have decided to take is acceptable. The simple rule is that you take things with double letters in the word (e.g. rabbit, kitten, balloon, etc.). So you could start with, ‘On my hot air balloon trip I will take a kitten.’
Proceed around the circle giving everyone a chance to suggest what they might like to take - confirming when they pack something acceptable, and telling them when they get it wrong. As this progresses, they will hopefully work out that you are using a specific rule to decide, and their challenge is to try and work out what this rule might be. Make sure they know that they shouldn’t blurt out the rule if they think they’ve worked it out, but test it with their next go to give everyone a chance to work it out. If your group is struggling to figure it out, when it gets to your turn in the circle make your examples really extreme and unconnected so they can see which elements of what you say are important.
Spoons
A game to get the group running around trying to collect crockery and steal it away from your opponents, like Christmas Eve at Ikea.
10 mins
This is an active game requiring nothing more than space, three chairs and five spoons, and let’s face it, which church hall doesn’t have more than its fair share of teaspoons? Firstly, place three chairs equidistant from each other (far enough away from each other to allow for running between) and place the five spoons on one of the chairs. Divide your group into two and send each group to one of the other two chairs.
Explain that the aim of the game is simply to collect three spoons on your team’s chair. Each team nominates one player to play a round. Those players take position at their team’s chair, and as the game starts they are allowed to run to fetch a spoon, and return it to their base. The only rules are that you can only carry one spoon at a time, and you can only pick up a spoon that is on one of the chairs (so you can’t take them from someone’s hand). Other than that you can take a spoon from either the main repository or your opponent’s chair, but as long as there are less than three spoons on a chair the game continues. Once a player gets three spoons back to their base their team wins that round, and each team nominates a new player to play the next round. Proceed until everyone has had a turn, adding up the scores to find a winner.
Masterpiece game
If this game achieves nothing else, it will teach young people manners.
10 mins
This game requires nothing but imagination, and something that can play the role of a paintbrush (a pen or pencil works well, or just a stick if you’re really struggling for things). Get your group sitting in a horseshoe shape and stand in the middle of it, as if there is a giant canvas for you to paint on stretched across the gap. Hold the ‘paintbrush’ in your hand and flourish it as if you are some artistic genius. Proclaim that you are in the process of creating a masterpiece, and make a few movements as if you are painting a picture. Tell your group that you’d like them to help you out, and to see if they’ve got any artistic skills. Get one of them to come up and take the ‘paintbrush’ and pretend to add something to your picture, after which you tell them whether they are creating a masterpiece or not. The rule is that if they say ‘thank you’ when they receive the ‘paintbrush’, whatever they paint is a masterpiece, and if not, it isn’t. Go around the group and give everyone a chance to have a go, and continue until they manage to work out what it is that they do that makes their ‘painting’ a masterpiece or not.
Glove racing
A good game and an awful pun. Just giving the people what they want.
10 mins
This game requires a couple of pairs of gloves (things that you’ve got ‘at hand’ – get it?) and your group to be seated in a circle.
Space out the gloves individually and evenly around the circle, and explain that the aim of the game is to manage to put on and take off a glove and pass it on to the next person in the circle before the next glove catches up. Anyone who ends up holding both gloves at the same time is out of the game and removed from the circle. Keep eliminating players until it becomes untenable to continue, or until you find two people who are really skilled at putting on and removing gloves quickly. The best gloves for this game are small rubber ones that are tricky to easily slip on or off. Allow for one glove every four people to make the game tense and busy. Keep a close eye for whenever a player is caught in a two glove pile-up, make everyone else pause in the putting on and removal of the gloves, and space them out evenly again before continuing. Remove a glove from the circle when there begins to be too many gloves for the numbers.
