Easter - Youth Workin' It

How To Make An Easter Pinata Cake

March 29, 2013 By Stephen Pepper Leave a Comment

If you want to make some fun Easter food for your youth group, here’s a great idea that Shae’s done for all three of her Girl Scout troops this last week – make an Easter pinata cake.

It’s really simple to make and will blow the mind of your young people when they cut into it to find loads of candy.

Here’s how to make an Easter pinata cake:

Ingredients

2 x cake mix (plus any additional ingredients required for that, such as eggs, oil, etc)
2 x tubs of cake frosting
Food coloring
Candy (jelly beans, M&Ms, small chocolate eggs and Tootsie Rolls work well for this)

Recipe

1. Make two separate cakes using the two mixes. Bake these in glass bowls so that the bases of them are rounded – the bowls also need to be the same size. Lightly grease the inside of the bowls and then sprinkle flour all around the inside before adding the cake mix – this will make it easier to remove them.

2. Once baked, remove them from the bowls and allow them to cool – they should look like this:

3. Once cooled, hollow out the inside of both cakes, leaving approximately one inch around the sides and at the base:

4. Put one tub of frosting in a bowl, add some food coloring and mix together. Put the other tub of frosting in a bowl, add a different color and mix together. Alternatively, just buy pre-colored frosting!

5. Cover one of the cake bases with one color of frosting, then go over with the other color:

6. Fill the cake with candy so that it’s heaped at the top:

7. Add the other hollowed out cake to the top:

8. Cover this other cake with both colors of frosting and voila – an Easter pinata cake:

As you can see from the picture above, Shae also added glittery sprinkles as it was for girls – if you have boys in your group, they probably won’t have quite the same appreciation for sparkly stuff.

When you’re ready to cut open the Easter pinata cake, make sure all your youth can see it – they’ll love seeing the candy fall out:

Happy Easter!

3 Fun Easter Youth Group Games

March 25, 2013 By Stephen Pepper Leave a Comment

It’s not long until Easter and this is always a great time of year to do some fun activities. In case you’re short of ideas, here are three Easter youth group games you can play with your young people:

1. Easter Egg Hunt

Get loads of plastic Easter eggs and fill them with candy. The number of eggs you’ll need will depend on how many youth you have, but try to go for at least 5-10 eggs per student.

You’ll be splitting the young people into teams and each team will be searching for eggs of a certain color, so if you’re anticipating that you’ll have four teams, you’ll need an equal number of eggs in four different colors.

Hide the eggs as widely as you can. Even if your youth group meets in a room that’s solely for them, are there any other rooms you can hide the eggs in as well? If so, do this but make sure they’re not going to disrupt any other activities or groups that might be held elsewhere, whether it’s in a church or a community center.

If the one room is all you’ve got, get creative! Hide the eggs in as many obscure places as you can:

Inside seat cushions
On top of ceiling fans
Taped behind curtains
Behind books on bookcases
Taped on the underside of tables

Once you’ve split the young people into teams, make it a race to see which team can find all of their eggs first.

2. Choc-Chuck-Bucket

For this Easter youth group game, you’ll need masking tape, one bucket per team and a large supply of Easter candy. Small chocolate eggs in wrappers are ideal, but jelly beans will also work (although you’ll need to rename the game!) You can use chocolate eggs that aren’t in wrappers, but it’ll probably mean you’ll spend much longer clearing up after as these types of eggs will break into pieces.

Put down a long line of tape on the floor, leaving enough room for all the youth to line up behind it. Next, place the buckets about 10-15 feet away in a line parallel to the masking tape.

Split the young people into teams, have them stand behind the line of tape and give each team the same amount of candy. Their objective is to take it in turns to throw a piece of candy into their bucket.

Either give them a time limit that they have to be finished by or just keep playing until each team is out of candy. The winning team will be the one that managed to get the most candy into their bucket.

3. Easter Scavenger Hunt

The final game idea is for you to organize an scavenger hunt. There are many different ways you can do this, the most common of which is to make a list of Easter-themed items for players to find and collect (or take photos of).

If you’re a Christian youth group, another option is to prepare a list of clues based on the Easter story, with the young people then having to search for the answers.

To make this activity nice and easy for you to organize, check out our sister site where you can find free Easter scavenger hunt lists, clues, riddles and more, including the two ideas listed above – check it out here.

Question: Do you have any good Easter youth group games that you organize for your young people? Let us know in the comments below.

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5 Great Easter Fundraising Ideas

March 18, 2013 By Stephen Pepper Leave a Comment

If you’re wanting to plan a youth group fundraiser for the coming season, here are 5 great Easter fundraising ideas:

1. Easter Baskets

The first fundraising idea is to put together and sell baskets full of all kinds of Easter goodies – candy, eggs, books, stuffed animals, etc. It’s also worth contacting local businesses to see if they’ll donate any goods or vouchers (e.g. free coffee at a local coffee shop). If you’re able to specify what your fundraiser is for (e.g. specific youth group activities, to buy new equipment, etc), they may be more likely to donate.

There are then a couple of ways that these can then be sold:

a) For your group – With this option, calculate how much the baskets and their contents will cost, then add an additional amount for the fundraising profit. For example, if your baskets cost $20 to put together, you could sell them for $30 and make $10 profit on each one.

b) For your community – If you want to benefit a local children’s charity or women’s shelter, another option is to sell the baskets on a Buy One Give One Free basis. With this option, if your baskets cost $20 to put together, sell them for $40 and for each basket that’s sold, give one to the local charity. This won’t make your youth group any money, but can be a great way for your youth to serve others.

2. Easter Egg Hunt

Organize an Easter egg hunt and charge for entry. Don;t make it too expensive, but you’ll need to charge enough to pay for the eggs, candy, etc while also allowing for some profit on top.

This option can also be combined with other ways of raising money, like simultaneously running a Krispy Kreme fundraiser. You could also sell bottles of water to thirsty participants – simply buy a case of water for $4 and sell each bottle for $1 each, thereby making $20 profit on each case.

Alternatively, some of the other ideas on this page will work well, particularly as they’re all Easter fundraising ideas too.

3. A Cracking Idea

This is an Easter youth group fundraiser that your young people will definitely be on board with! For this, buy dozens of eggs and hard boil one egg out of every dozen. You’ll also need some Easter-themed prizes – one prize for each dozen.

You’ll then need a number of volunteers who are good sports. If you’re a church youth group, the youth pastor, head pastor and other church leaders would be perfect for this. If you’re a local non-profit, see if the CEO and other well-known community members would be willing to be on the receiving end of this game.

Have the volunteers sit on chairs. People can then pay $1 or $2 to crack an egg on one of the volunteers’ heads. If it’s uncooked then they don’t win a prize (but really, cracking the egg on the head is a win!) If they pick the hard boiled egg, they win one of the Easter prizes, although this is more of a commiseration prize.

The more volunteers you have the better, as this will hopefully mean people will take part in this Easter fundraiser more than once. If you charge $2 a turn, this should mean you raise approx. $15-$20 for every dozen eggs (depending on how much you spend on prizes).

4. Eggs-cellent Guess

Get a large jar and fill it with as many candy eggs as you can – Whopper’s Robin Eggs or Cadbury’s Mini Eggs are perfect for this.

People then pay to guess how many eggs are in the jar, with the person whose guess is closest winning the jar, complete with eggs. The cost to enter this fundraiser will vary depending on how much the jar and eggs cost, as well as how many people you’re anticipating will take part.

5. Easter Egg Decorating Competition

Get all the equipment you’ll need to decorate some eggs, as well as some prizes. Similar to the Easter baskets option above, contact some local businesses to see if they’ll donate any goods or services – paying less for prizes will maximize the fundraiser.

Supporters then pay to decorate an egg and enter it into a competition to see which one looks the best. If you’ll have enough participants, judge them based on different age groups, such as 0-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-25, 26-50 and 51+.

If you liked these youth group activities, check out all our other fundraisers.

Question: What other great Easter fundraising ideas do you know of? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

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