Breathing meditation. Discuss how breathing can affect your performance – from good breathing technique when swimming, to hyperventilating when panicking. Ask your mentee to sip breaths up the straw until their lungs are completely full, then take a bit more, then slowly blow all the air back out until they feel empty, then blow a bit more out! Does it feel calming? Does it buy you a few precious seconds to slow down and get your thoughts together or to let God in? In what scenarios could you do with that calming pause? There’s a great quote from Martin Lloyd-Jones: “Have you realised that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?” It’s a great insight into how we let our emotions dictate to us whether we succeed or fail, instead of ensuring that good sense, facts and faith inform what we do.
Impromptu blow football. Scrunch up a napkin as a ball and set up two goals in front of you with sugar shakers etc.
The unlikely cross. Knot two straws together to make a cross. Discuss how straws are an unlikely material to represent Jesus’ death and life. What ways can your mentee think of finding or representing Jesus in this busy, modern, cluttered world?
Straw pan pipes. Cut a few straws to varying lengths. Cut the end into a pointed ‘V’ shape. If you blow into the straw it should produce a whistle. You could discuss how God can make ‘music’ out of the mundane and everyday things.
Straw letters. Cut some straws into smaller lengths and take turns to write words.
Straw noughts and crosses. Use straws to create a noughts and crosses board and pieces.
Water, water. Each of you needs two cups – one with water, one empty. Use a straw to transfer the water by putting your thumb over one end to create a vacuum so the water doesn’t fall out when you lift it out of the cup. Have a race to empty one cup into the other.
Straw towers. Nip the end of a straw so you can fit it into the end of another. See how many you can fit together without it breaking – can you reach the ceiling? (Tenuous link: the Tower of Babel?)
Plaited Coaster. Flatten some straws and create a lattice, plaiting them into a square shape.
Bendy animation. Draw a little person (doing yoga?!) on the bendy bit of the straw so that when you bend it they lean over.
Maybe suggest a few ‘straw activities’ and ask your mentee to come up with the tenuous link! Can they back it up with a relevant scripture? Apart from anything else, fiddling with a straw can help young people concentrate while you chat and can take the awkwardness out of silence or awkward conversations.
