To begin the evening I introduced an Ice Breaker ball (which was useful later as part of our group made their own ice breaker ball) and we welcomed kids into the evening. When I use an ice breaker ball, or question book, I generally pose the question the one individual loud enough for everyone to hear. Then I allow kids to talk with neighbors for about a minute as they discuss and shout out their answers. Then I readdress the original student and let them share their answer and why. It's a good method because everyone seems to get involved but there's also a clear pattern and leadership to the ice breaker. I also get a chance to rope in kids who are leaders and kids on the fringe because I choose who gets the ball/question next. Of course we also have a unique room and a large group where sitting in a circle isn't always helpful.
Then we played some great ice breaker games. The purpose of the games was to get our kids comfortable with each other and develop some partnerships that would endure all night. For the games last night, I was intention about creating a pair a people who would be together for the duration of the evening. I love to pair up kids with each other, and I've been thinking about this strategy for a while and I've settled on it as a primary strategy for our group for a few reasons. First, it gives them some one to connect with that they can turn to in moments of confusion, share a laugh with, and most importantly someone who they can reconnect with in future weeks. Second, it makes getting into small groups easier. Regardless of the craziness of the games, or the labor of the service project, when the kids find themselves in small groups, this partner becomes a lifeline to vulnerability that they otherwise may or may not have in our random small groups each night. And Third, games can always be heightened by adding a partner who has to cooperate with you. It's great to watch kids play ultimate frisbee, but if you tie two kids together and watch them play, they learn different things, they play different ways, and they laugh harder together.
We began with Screaming Yellow Zonkers (or elbow tag, as the kids like to call it). This is a standard game, so I upped the energy by turning it into a fast-elimination game. First, I gave each runner only 5 seconds to find their next partner while being chased, this eliminated the desire of our more athletic kids who like to just run and run, taunting the slower kids when being chased. IF someone was just running around I would start counting, ensuring that they picked a new elbow and passed on the game. I also asked each partner to sit down after someone latched onto them turning the game into an elimination game. It created obstacles on the floor (which was fun), and it ensured that every person got to be a runner. The last person running who had no elbows left to attach to, I called out and let them be the chaser on the next round. The game was a great game, lasted about 10 minutes and would have been better if we had music playing.
After the final round of elbow tag I felt kids were sufficiently mixed up, they had each changed partners several times so I announced that their current partner was going to be their partner for the rest of the evening. And then we played a game called head-foot. Organizing kids into two concentric circles with one partner standing in each circle, I instructed the circles to rotate opposite directions. This is a good way to play many games as it ensures that partners never quite know where their partner is at all times and makes the center of the circle a chaotic zone once something is called out and partners are finding each other. During this game I used the mic to call out two body parts (head-foot) and partners raced to find each other and then connect the two parts, the last partners to find each other are called out. It's a good game, but it's hard to stop, so we played for about 15-20 minutes until our final partners won.
Next we introduced 4 little acts of love that we were going to be doing all night, and allowed students (partners) to choose where they would serve. Groups had about 45 minutes to complete their project, each group had specific leaders with instructions and for groups where there was less to do I started them with a question or two to get to know each other. Finding service projects to do at 6:30 on a Sunday is difficult, but all four of these were winners:
- One group cut out preschool shapes. Our preschool is always needing volunteers to simply cut out shapes that will eventually be glued together by the kids. we had a team of 6 sitting around a table having great conversation with each other.
- One group used mod-podge to create prayer cubes. This is a left over craft from a spring family event. During that event families made prayer cubes for dinner, but for our youth we used symbols that represented the different camp-song-prayers to glue onto the cubes. This group just jumped right into the activity, which was good because there is some dry-time involved, but would have probably been better if leadership had gathered the kids and explained everything before they started. This group of 12 each made a cube, and using notecards/key rings wrote out the accompanying prayers so that we can give the cubes as gifts to other youth groups or to camps.
- One group stuffed care bags that our pastors will deliver to shut-ins in our congregation when they visit. These bags are an extension of a preschool project who made leaves/colored turkeys for the bags. Our students decorated the bags, put in special notes, and stuffed other assorted goods into the bags - like fake flowers, fall decorations, prayers... Our group of 15 really got into it and followed instructions having really good conversation about who they were serving and why.
- One group created ice-breaker balls. Using the ball we began our evening with as a template, the group used soccer balls and volley balls with sharpies to write their own ice breaker questions. I provided them with lots of ice-breaker books, which they loved to look through, and led them in a quick discussion at the beginning to help them understand what would be the best types of questions and the purpose of the balls. We made several balls, though few were finished at the end of 45 minutes. some balls were intended for Sunday school classrooms/confirmation small groups, others will be used by our group or given away as gifts to other youth groups. I think we'll use this idea again when we travel to New Orleans this summer because it was so much fun.
We were going to close our evening with a Bible study and regrouping into their small groups, but I changed my mind last second and decided that it would be more helpful to large group debrief the service projects by having each group present and talk about how they served with little acts of love.
We closed with some great worship and a few reminder announcements about summer trip to New Orleans for interested persons.
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