Youth Workin' It

Consultancy and Resources for Youth Workers and Organizations Worldwide

Valentine’s Day Activities For Teenagers

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Valentine's Day Activities For TeenagersA few days ago, we suggested three games that were perfect for a Valentine’s Day theme. In case you were wanting to do an entire youth group session based on this theme, here are three Valentine’s Day activities for teenagers:

Love Languages

You may well have heard of the bestselling book by Gary Chapman called The 5 Love Languages. He’s also written a follow up called The 5 Love Languages Of Teenagers.

The love languages are the same as the original book, although they can manifest themselves differently with teenagers compared to how you’d relate them to your partner.

In case you’re not familiar with the book, the Five Love Languages are:

  1. Words Of Affirmation
  2. Physical Touch
  3. Quality Time
  4. Acts Of Service
  5. Gifts

We’d therefore recommend familiarizing yourself with the book and then organizing some or all of these youth group activities:

Valentine’s Day Activity 1 – What’s Your Love Language?

Explain the concept of the love languages to your young people and have them work out what their primary love language is. So long as they’re not too embarrassed with sharing, go around the room and have them say what they think their one is.

For anyone struggling to work out theirs, have them consider the reverse – what kind of behavior annoys them or emotionally hurts them? If it really bothers them when someone’s mean to them, their primary language might be Words Of Affirmation. If a parent never spends time with them and that hurts the teen, theirs may well be Quality Time.

Valentine’s Day Activity 2 – Does It Change?

Next, explore whether their primary love language might change from person to person. For example, do they think they have the same love language when it comes to:

  • Parents
  • Best Friend
  • Boyfriend / girlfriend

They may appreciate words of affirmation from their parents the most, but perhaps quality time is more important when it comes to their best friend.

As for boyfriends / girlfriends – remember that they’re teenagers, so be prepared for a whole load of “Physical Touch” answers and make sure they stay appropriate!

Valentine’s Day Activity 3 – How Can I Love?

One of the most important concepts in the book is that the love language you “speak” isn’t always going to be the same as the one others have.

For example, someone whose primary language is Words Of Affirmation will often be an encourager of those they love – the love they need is the love they give out. However, using only this love language with everyone won’t be as effective, as not everyone appreciates affirming words in the same way.

For this final activity then, have the youth consider a few different groups of people and have them:

  1. Identify what they think that person’s primary love language is
  2. Think of two or three ways that they can speak that person’s love language to make sure they know how much they care, rather than simply speaking their own all the time

People they could do this for include:

  • Mother
  • Father
  • Brother(s)
  • Sister(s)
  • Best friend
  • Boyfriend / girlfriend
  • Any other significant people in their lives

For example, they might realize that their Mom’s language is physical touch which is why she always wants to hug them. Instead of trying to shrug her off, the teen could return the hug to let their Mom know that they do actually love her.

As another example, they may think their little brother is annoying because he always wants to be around when the teenager’s hanging out with friends. This could simply mean that his language is quality time; if so, it doesn’t mean they have to let him hang out at the same time, but they could make an effort to spend more time with him at other times.

Emphasize the importance of making wise choices though – just because a boyfriend or girlfriend’s love language is physical touch, it doesn’t mean that they should have sex with them! We have a few resources and ideas to help you explore decision making with your young people:

We also have many different self esteem activities for teenagers – although not directly related to decision making, a young person with low self esteem is more likely to make poor choices in the search for love and acceptance.

Question: Have you ever looked at love languages with your young people? If so, how did it go? Also, what other Valentine’s Day activities for teenagers would you recommend? Let us know in the comments below.

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Valentine’s Day Games For Teenagers

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Valentine's Day Games For TeenagersIt’s not long until February 14th, so here are 3 Valentine’s Day games for teenagers that can be done with an entire youth group.

1. Set Your Heart Racing

Resources

  • Drinking straws
  • Red tissue paper
  • Scissors

Preparation

Cut heart shapes out of the red tissue paper – one heart for each team.

How To Play

To play this youth group game, split the group into teams of the same size, with at least five people in each group if possible.

This is a relay game, so have the teams stand in straight lines all facing the front of the room. Give each person a drinking straw and a heart to the first person in each team’s line. The aim is for them to transfer the heart from one end of the line to the other (and back again if you only have a small group) using only the drinking straw.

Here’s how they should do this:

  • The first person sucks through the straw to keep the heart at the other end
  • They pass it to the second person in line by having them use their own straw for suction
  • The first person stops sucking
  • The second person turns round to the next person in line and the process continues

Rules

If the heart falls to the floor, the last person to have control of it has to pick it up using their straw – no hands allowed!

Winner

The first team to get their heart from one end to the other.

2. Head-Two-Head

Resources

  • Post-it-notes
  • Pens

Preparation

Write names of different celebrity couples on post-it notes – you’ll need one couple for every young person in the youth group.

How To Play

Put a sticky note on the forehead of each of the young people. They then have to go around the room trying to work out who their celebrity couple is.

Rules

They can only do this by asking Yes or No questions – no open questions are allowed. For example, if one of the couples was Beyonce and Jay-Z, the youth might be able to work it out by asking questions like:

  • Are they still alive? (Yes)
  • Are they over 50 years old? (No)
  • Are they sportspeople? (No)
  • Are they singers? (Yes)
  • Are they both in bands (No)

They wouldn’t be allowed to ask questions like:

  • How old are they?
  • What type of music do they do?
  • What type of hairstyle do they have?

Winner

The first person to work out their celebrity couple. Keep going with the game though until everyone’s managed to work out who their famous lovebirds are.

3. Valentine’s Day Scavenger Hunt

This final Valentine’s Day game for teenagers will have them looking for a list of different Valentine’s Day-themed items.

This game might take a little more planning, as you may need to recruit extra volunteers to drive the young people around to collect the items. Another alternative would be to organize it as a photo scavenger hunt and play it at the mall.

For full details of how to plan this and a free downloadable Valentine’s Day scavenger hunt list, check out our sister site here. There are also many other scavenger hunt ideas on that site that are perfect for youth groups.

Question: What other Valentine’s Day games that are suitable for youth groups do you know of? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

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Valentine’s Day: Living True Love

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Show some love this Valentine’s Day

It’s Valentine’s Day.

A day for celebrating love.

Unfortunately, there are also many youth and children around the world who do not know what true love really is. If they think about it, all they equate it with is fear, money, lust, pain, hurt, anger, loneliness and much more.

They are child sex slaves and trafficked children.

This post is about one girl. And eight. Both stories have inspired change in the child sex and child trafficking industries.

First there is number 146. Her story can be found on Love146.org. She was a young sex slave in a brothel in Southeast Asia and seeing her radically changed the lives of those who would found Love146, a non-profit helping with the prevention and aftercare of child sex slavery and exploitation. Hers is a love story.

The other is about eight teenage girls who decided that One is Greater than None. These girls were 14 when they decided to raise money and awareness to help others and  1>0 was born. Their organization raises funds to support trafficked children in Ghana, particularly the work of the Touch A Life Foundation.

Your youth can get involved in helping to end child sex slavery and trafficking by contacting Love146 and hosting an event, joining a task force, becoming a partner or working to raise awareness in their schools and communities.

Question: What other charities and organizations do you know of that are helping to fight child sex slavery, exploitation and trafficking? Share your ideas in the comments below.

Enjoyed reading about what youth are doing around the world?  Check out our other ‘Spotlight on Youth‘ posts.

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Valentine’s Day Fundraiser

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Valentine's Day Fundraiser
He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me……….

In honor of tomorrow, we’ve got a Valentine’s Day fundraiser idea for your youth group to organize. But first of all – an apology.

It would probably have been much more useful for me to have written this weeks ago, so that if you thought it was a great youth fundraiser you’d have time to plan it.

However, I’m a guy. And we’re talking Valentine’s Day. I therefore didn’t give much thought to it until a couple of days beforehand (sorry wifey!) Still, if you’re coming across this post in future years after searching for a Valentine’s Day fundraiser, you’ve come across it at just the right time. So I think that lets me off the hook. Maybe.

Today’s youth fundraiser idea is to organize a Valentine’s Day Flower Fundraiser. Here are some ideas on how to do this:

1) Procure

Contact florists or flower wholesalers in advance and find out how much it would cost to buy flowers in bulk. Consider different types of flowers – obviously roses will be needed, but gerbera daisies, pink lilies and others could be good additional options. The florist will be able to give suggestions as to which types of flowers are popular on Valentine’s Day.

2) Price

To make money from this Valentine’s Day fundraiser, you’ll need to mark up the prices you’re quoted from the florist/wholesaler. Try not to price the flowers so high that the cost is prohibitive for people, but bear in mind that a) people are willing to pay more for flowers on Valentine’s Day and b) they might also be willing to pay a little extra given that it’s a youth fundraiser.

3) Placing orders

Put together an order form for people to complete in order to support your Valentine’s Day fundraiser. The form should include:

  • Flower bouquet options & prices (along with a check box for them to indicate which they want)
  • Who flowers are from (unless they wish it to be anonymous)
  • Who flowers are for
  • A message to go with the flowers
  • Address to be delivered to (if you’re offering this additional service), as well as what time range they should be delivered
  • Contact number in case of any problems
  • Payment options

4) Payment

To encourage as many orders as possible, try to accept as many payment methods as possible. Cash and checks would likely be easy to accept, but it’s now easy for youth groups to accept credit card payments as well.

5) Promote

There are many ways to do this:

  • Get in touch with your local newspaper and see if they’ll run a story about the Valentine’s Day fundraiser. Provide details of who they should contact if they want to buy flowers to support your youth group.
  • Hand out flyers
  • Get your youth to spread the word at school
  • If your youth group is run through a church, have the Valentine’s Day fundraiser mentioned in a service
  • Ask anyone you know to take flyers into their workplace
  • Use Facebook, Twitter, etc

6) Purchase

Florists and flower wholesalers will require payment when you pick up the flowers, so make sure you have the cash with you, checks have been cashed, etc.

7) Provide

If you’re not offering to deliver the flowers, contact the buyers to let them know that their bouquets are ready to be picked up and where they should be picked up from.

Maximize your fundraising by:

  • Selling other Valentine’s Day related goodies like chocolates, teddy bears, etc
  • Offering to deliver the flowers for a fee – florists often charge $10-$30 for delivery, so you could either charge a similar amount or undercut them to encourage more sales
  • Ordering extra flowers to sell on the day – find a location with a lot of foot traffic on Valentine’s Day to sell flowers (e.g. outside Hallmark, train stations, parking lots, etc). Make up signs so people know it’s a youth fundraiser, but make sure you get the appropriate permissions to sell there

If you’ve found this helpful, you may also like our other ideas for youth group fundraisers. If you want a different type of youth group Valentine’s Day activity, why not organize a scavenger hunt – there are instructions and a free list here.

Question: Are there any extra things you’d do for a Valentine’s Day fundraiser? Have you done anything similar to this? Let us know in the comments below.

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