Youth Workin' It

Consultancy and Resources for Youth Workers and Organizations Worldwide

Water Balloon Challenge – Youth Group Games

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Water Balloon Challenge
Image courtesy of Tom Clifton, Flickr

This week we have another water game for youth groups – one that’s designed to make a big splash! Here’s how to play this water balloon challenge:

Resources

  • Water balloons
  • Buckets – one per team
  • Colanders – one per team
  • Cones or ropes
  • Towels

Location

This is definitely one of those youth group games that you’ll want to play outside due to how wet it’s going to get.

Preparation

Fill up all of the water balloons and put them in buckets of water to prevent them from bursting early. Provide at least 20 balloons per team (more for larger teams).

Make a line using cones or a piece of rope and put the buckets of water balloons along the line, evenly spaced out. Make a parallel line about 20 feet away with some more cones or rope and put the colanders along the line. The colanders should be directly opposite the buckets of balloons at the other end of the playing area.

Teams

Split the teenagers into teams, ideally ones that are the same size.

Water Balloon Challenge Rules

Have each team designate one of their members as catcher – this is the person who’ll be getting soaked, so you might want to give them the heads up about that before they decide!

Each catcher should go and stand next to one of the colanders. Have the rest of the players stand behind the other line, with each team next to one of the water balloon buckets and facing the catchers.

The catchers should then hold the colander on top of their head, while their teammates take it in turns to throw the water balloons in the air towards them. Their challenge is to try to catch the balloon in the colander without stepping over their line.

It doesn’t matter that the balloons will burst in the colander, just so long as they landed in there.

Winners

The team that manages to catch the most balloons – it’s therefore worth allocating one volunteer per team to count how many get caught.

Alternative

If you want to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to get wet, play this as a water relay instead.

You can do this by having one person from each team start as catcher and getting one of their teammates to throw a balloon at them. The catcher then runs to the back of his team’s line, while the thrower becomes the catcher.

Keep rotating like this so that everyone has a few opportunities to be both the thrower and catcher.

Question: Have you ever played this Water Balloon Challenge or something like it? Do you have any ideas for how to make it even more fun? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

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Youth Bullying – An Epidemic Or Expected?

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BullyingBullying.

We hear about it everywhere. On the news. In the classroom. At youth clubs. On the streets. In the papers (what’s left of them anyway).

There are anti-bullying posters, campaigns, safe spaces, classes, courses, bracelets, shirts, petitions and much more.

But is it a real problem or a manufactured one? Are kids ‘just being kids’ or is there something more to it all?

The US government thinks it’s a problem – Stopbullying.gov has provided its first infographic on bullying in the US:

 

what-you-need-to-know-infographic

What is bullying?

Bullying is the ongoing targeting of another person with the intention of causing physical, mental or emotional harm.

The key word is ‘ongoing.’ It’s about someone being the target over and over again. Unfortunately, youth will say things that aren’t very nice and make fun of one another, but it’s when this goes on and on, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, that it’s considered bullying. It can happen at school, home, in the neighborhood, via text message or online. It can be name calling, threatening, blaming, ostracizing, ignoring, spreading rumors and much more.

For me, one of the big issues with ‘bullying’ today is that many of our young people seem to have a complete inability to be empathetic. It’s something that’s either taught or it’s not. You can’t just ‘hope’ that a child will learn empathy. It goes against our nature – which is generally self-focused – to think about how our words or actions might affect someone else.

Parents bullying?

And then, what do you do when it isn’t just youth who are bullying, but their parents as well. I worked at a program in the UK where there were one or two teens who were identified as ‘the problem‘. They were ‘the bullies.’

Except, when you stood outside the situation and considered all the angles, there was one boy in particular who was being targeted. Targeted for punishment, exclusion, blame and much more. The youth all identified this one boy as ‘the bully’ and yet from where I was standing, he was the target. He was being repeatedly excluded, ignored, identified as the troublemaker and was the reason many families considered removing their own youth from the program. What do you do then? Do you call the parents out as bullies?

I would say bullying is a problem, but not always in the way we identify or expect. Make sure that as you reflect on your practice, that in the process of rooting out troubling, exclusionary behavior, you’re not ostracizing any other youth in the process.

If you’re having a problem with bullying in your group, or could see one developing, you might consider trying some bridge-building activities.

Questions: Do you think bullying is real or a manufactured idea by the overly sensitive among us? What do you do to ensure that all the youth in your program are safe? How do you deal with parent bullies? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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10 Superpower Would You Rather Questions

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Superpower Would You Rather Questions
Image courtesy of tobit_e, Flickr

This week we’re starting a new series where we’re giving you ideas of Would You Rather questions you can use with your youth group.

As we mentioned when we explained how to play it, this is a great game that helps with getting to know your young people better.

Each week, the questions will be based on a certain theme or topic. We’ll give 10 question ideas, along with how you can use the game to lead in to some other activities. This week’s theme is superpowers.

10 Superpower Would You Rather Questions

Would you rather…

  1. be able to see through walls or hear things from miles away?
  2. be able to fly or be invisible?
  3. be the world’s fastest runner or swimmer?
  4. be able to walk through walls or breathe underwater?
  5. be able to teleport or see into the future?
  6. be able to walk through walls or create fire at will?
  7. be able to read someone’s mind or make them forget things?
  8. be able to run 100 mph or drop from any height and land on your feet without getting hurt?
  9. be able to jump as high as a skyscraper or climb up the outside of one like Spiderman?
  10. be able to move objects with your mind or make them disappear?

Discussion Questions / Other Activities

501 Would You Rather Questions
Get the book – 501 Would You Rather Questions
  • What superpower would they love to have the most?
  • (Follow up question from the previous one) In Spiderman, there’s the well-known line of “With great power comes great responsibility”. If they had that superpower, how could they use it to benefit others?
  • Although they don’t have superpowers, each of them has unique abilities and talents. Get them to list some of these and then work out how they can use these to help others.
  • You could also use this session plan idea about using skills to help others.
  • For Christian youth groups, the Would You Rather questions could be tied in with a session about spiritual gifts.

Questions: What other superpower questions could be used in a game of Would You Rather? Also, what other youth group activities could this theme be tied into? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

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Water Balloon Baseball – Youth Group Games

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Water Balloon Baseball
Image courtesy of Benjamin Lehman, Flickr

Summer’s a great time for youth group games – the weather’s good so you can play them outdoors, plus it gives you an opportunity to play water games.

This week’s idea is a wet twist on a regular classic – Water Balloon Baseball. Here’s how to play it:

Resources

Preparation

Fill up all the water balloons and put them in buckets that are filled with water – this helps prevent them from bursting.

The number of balloons you need will depend on how many young people you have playing – we’d recommend having at least 100 prepared, but for a larger group you’ll need far more.

Set out the cones in the shape of a baseball diamond. If you don’t have cones available, you can use anything else as markers instead.

Teams

Split the youth group into same-sized teams. For smaller groups, two teams is fine. For larger groups, split them into more than two teams, but make sure the total number of teams is an even number so that they each have another team to play against.

If you do play with more than two teams and have enough resources, have several games going on at the same time – that way you don’t have loads of young people standing around getting bored while they wait to play.

Water Balloon Baseball Rules

The first person on a team should line up to bat. The pitcher tosses a water balloon at them and the batter tries to hit it. The batter gets up to three attempts to hit it and burst it – if they miss it all three times, they’re out.

If they hit the balloon and it bursts, they should run to first base. The pitcher is allowed one water balloon to throw at the batter – if they hit them, the batter’s out. If they miss, the batter should try to run from first to second base, with the pitcher getting one more water balloon to try to hit them.

If they miss, the batter continues from second to third base while the pitcher tries hitting them again with one balloon, then from third to home. If the batter manages to get to home plate without having being hit by any of the four water balloons while rounding the bases, they get a home run.

The next member of the team tries doing the same thing – the team keeps going until three players are out, then the other team gets a chance at trying to hit the ‘baseball’. Keep playing until every player has had a chance to bat at least once.

Pitcher

It’s up to you who you choose to have as the pitcher. If you want to make it fair and consistent for each player, you or another volunteer could be the pitcher.

Alternatively, players on the opposing team could take it in turns at pitching.

Fielders

Not necessary!

Question: Are there any other rules or ideas you would add to Water Balloon Baseball? Let us know in the comments below.

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