Something old: Octopus
You will need: cones; chalk or masking tape to mark out rectangle
10 minutes
This is an old game, but a good one. Mark out a large rectangle roughly 10m by 20m (although the size can vary with your space). You then choose two to four people to be catchers and they stand in the middle of the rectangle. All the other kids line up along one of the short ends of the rectangle.
The aim is very simple: the group have to get from one end of the rectangle to the other without being caught. On your signal, players start running across the rectangle. They can be out in two ways: either they are caught by a catcher or they leave the rectangle.
Players who have been caught become octopuses. An octopus sits down where they were caught inside the rectangle (if they run outside the rectangle place them somewhere near where they went off). They cannot move but they can wave their arms around and catch people who run by them. Get the octopods and catchers organised and the remaining players run back across the rectangle to where they started. Keep running from end to end until you have a winner (or winners).
Spice up the game by playing different versions. Crabs - if you’re caught you go on your knees but can only move from side to side. Sharks - if you’re caught you slide on your stomach but you can move anywhere!
Something new: Card sort
You will need: several photos or cards cut into four to eight pieces
5 minutes
This is a very simple game that’s great for smaller groups with limited space. Before the session, find some cards (eg leftover Christmas cards), postcards or printed photos and cut them into four to eight pieces (fewer pieces work better for younger children, for young people, you can cut them into ten or more pieces, depending on how cruel you’re feeling). Hide the pieces of all the cards around your space.
Split the group into teams, or if numbers are low, people can work on their own. The aim is to find and complete as many of the pictures as possible by finding the pieces and putting them together. Each person or team must complete the card they are working on before they go onto another card. The team who get the most complete cards is the winner. You could make the pictures they find fit into the story or theme of the session.
Something borrowed: Land, sea, air
You will need: walls; signs: a crash mat
15 minutes
This game is stolen borrowed from my Boys’ Brigade leaders when I was a kid and is still a great game now. All you really need is space to run around in but you can also add a few twists to spice it up even further.
In its simplest form, one end of the hall is ‘land’, one end is ‘air’ and in the middle is ‘sea’. If you shout “land” everyone has to run and touch the land wall, if you shout “air” they run and touch the air wall. If you shout “sea” everyone runs to the middle and sits down. The last person to get to the right place is eliminated. You want to keep the game moving fairly quickly so nobody is out for too long and you can bring everyone in to start again. Once everyone is used to the game, mix things up by shouting a few places in quick succession.
This doesn’t just have to be land, sea, air. If a Bible passage has two or three places in it and ideally some water you can easily adapt it for your session.
Something blue: follow the yarn
You will need: some blue wool (or another colour, we’re not that fussy, but other colours would stop this game being ‘something blue’); treasure such as chocolate or sweets
10 minutes
This game is so wonderfully simple that there’s almost nothing to describe beyond the title but it’s one that children and self-aware young people love playing, particularly if you make the trail super-long and take them on all sorts of wild goose chases to weird and wonderful places. The concept is simple but it does require a fair bit of set-up. Create a trail using a ball of wool which the players follow to get to the treasure at the end. The real joy comes from how exciting you make that trail. What makes a good trail is going under things, over things, through tunnels, into different rooms, through a Wendy house and anything else you can find in your space. You want to make it reasonably long so it lasts a good few minutes. And you can set up several trails of (differently coloured) wool so each person or team can choose which trail to follow.
To play, give a trail to each person (or team of people if you have more people than trails) and get them to wrap up the wool as they follow it. At the end of each trail you can put some treasure to find. This could be different prizes at the end of the game, props to use in a story later or whatever you want to be at the end. This is not just a fun game but can be a way to find things you’ll use later in the session.
Stephen Mawhinney was children’s worker for Barnsbury Parish, but is about to plant a church in King’s Cross.
