Mud Pie Games

How many classic novels can you or your group identify just by the opening lines?

1. “All children, except one, grow up.”
2. “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone 84 days now without taking a fish.”
3. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…”
4. “Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York.”
5. “Call me Ishamael.”
6. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
7. “Amerigo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice…”
8. “A throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and gray steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.”
9. “The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.”
10. “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Answers: 1. Peter Pan, JM Barrie, 2. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway, 3. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, 4. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith, 5. Moby Dick, Herman Melville, 6. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, 7. The Godfather, Mario Puzo, 8. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 9. The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane, 10. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

Blank white cards available on Amazon

When you’ve had your fill of spoons, hearts and I doubt it, take a look at these weird card games for some fast paced card-slapping fun.

The 2008 Mentalfloss article that explains these fun games in detail doesn’t include any links, so you can check them out below.

1. GUILLOTINE – Relive the French revolution

2. GRAVE ROBBERS FROM OUTER SPACE – If Ed Wood movies were a card game

3. 1000 BLANK WHITE CARDS – Everybody makes the rules (maybe needs some boundaries)

4. KILLER BUNNIES AND THE QUEST FOR THE MAGIC CARROT – Bunnies, you just can’t trust them

5. GOTHER THAN THOU – fun with eyeliner and crying yourself to sleep

6. CHEZ GEEK – maybe too much drunkenness for a youth group game, but here’s the link

7. UNXPLODED COW – think The Hurt Locker only with cows

8. AQUARIUS – Multigenerational connect-the-elements game

9. FALLING – You’re all falling out of a plane, winner is the last to die

Aeron chair hockey in Sri Lanka | Photo Sports Today

Chair hockey is a brutal sport – maybe too much for a church youth group. Maybe not. Take five players on a team, give each player a hockey stick and a $600 office chair and go wild on any smooth surface.

Aeron Chair Hockey got its start as a way to raise funds for Special Olympics in Illinois. The rules for chair hockey are as close to actual hockey as you can have on five wheels.

Yellow Card Offences
1. No hitching – grabbing another’s chair and hang on for purpose of being pulled across court (with hands and/or stick)
2. No whip and spin – when player grabs an occupied chair and whips it around at high speed until the victim, when finally released, is too dizzy and nauseated to stay in the game
3. No gross separation – any player standing upright, sliding off the seat, or in any way vacating the chair during a game commits gross separation
4. No raised sticks – no sticks allowed to be raised above the seat pan of chairs
5. No kicking – do not use your foot to kick the plug
6. Do not hit, hook or hold an opponent’s stick with your stick.

Is your youth group game enough to try it? All you need is a smooth floor for a rink, some basic hockey equipment and some inexpensive roller chairs – unless your church has an epic budget for youth ministry.

Take a classic board game, play it backwards and fun will ensue – but it can be trickier than it sounds. In Giveaway Checkers the winner is the person who loses all her pieces or can’t make a legal move.

Sometimes called Suicide Checkers or Anti-Checkers, Giveaway Checkers makes it easy to stay in the game if your goal is to avoid losing. But it’s spectacularly hard to win this board game. For one thing, it’s easy enough to avoid capturing the other player’s pieces. And then, as you clear the board, it becomes even easier to avoid being in a situation where you would be forced to capture a player’s piece.

It seems like the most successful strategy would be to do everything you can do to prevent the other person from getting “kinged.” Once the other player has a king he can burn up turns by wandering all over the board. And you can do the same.

How many people can you get on top of a milk crate (or similar sturdy object) at one time? All Aboard is a fun team building game for youth groups that encourages cooperation by challenging players to work together. The game is ideal for 6 to 12 players but don’t worry if your group is bigger than that – just use more milk crates.

The secret to this game is to think outside the box (sorry). Clearly you can’t get 10 or 20 people standing on top of the same milk crate at the same time. So where else can those people be? Perhaps hanging onto the shoulders of one of the box-standers. This is a real “feet” of engineering!

Here are a couple of other cooperative youth ministry games that can be used to build teamwork among people of all ages:

Blind Square

You need a team of more than four people, blindfolds for all team members, a level playing field and about 150 ft. of rope. The rules are simple, each player needs to keep at least one hand on the rope at all times. Working together, the team must try and form a perfect square in a given period of time. (Five to ten minutes works well.)

Ping Pong Rescue

The object of this game is to get a ping pong ball out of the bottom of a long pipe without turning the pipe upside down. The solution seems obvious, fill the pipe with water from a nearby 5 gallon bucket. There’s only one small problem – the pipe is riddled with holes.

This activity takes a 4-6 ft. long piece of PVC pipe, about 4″ diameter, capped at one end and held in an upright position. Prepare the pipe ahead of time by drilling two dozen or so random small holes (1/16″ to 1/8″). Provide a five gallon bucket of water (or other water source) at a distance, cups or pans, and some other random “tools” such as dowels, string, coat hangers. Eventually the most practical solution will be for some people to relay water while others keep the holes plugged.

Think Small

The objective is to see if you can get everyone in a medium to large group to touch a small object at the same time. For a group of 20 see if everyone can touch a soccer ball simultaneously. If they succeed at that task try a softball, ping pong ball, a marble.

People’s Ball is a dodgeball variant that is full of fast action with a twist – people can play even when they are “out.”

Rules for People’s Ball Dodgeball

Start with a typical dodgeball court with center line. Two end zones are designated as prisons.

Game play starts with a ball on the center line and all players in the end zones. At the command players rush out to grab the ball. When a player gets possession of the ball all players on that person’s team must freeze in place. The other team can remain in motion.

The object of the game is to tag players on the opposite team, sending them to “prison” in the end zone behind your team. Game ends when all players on your side are in prison.

While your team is in possession of the ball you may pass the ball to another player on your team, but nobody on your team can move. Offenders are sent to prison.

Out-of-bounds balls are returned to play on the center line unless the ball goes into an end zone. Balls in the end zone are in the prisoner’s possession, who try and earn freedom by tagging out a member of the opposing team. A prisoner can also earn freedom by catching a ball thrown over the heads of the opposing team by the prisoner’s home team.

Dodgeball Variations:

Play with a yoga ball instead of “regulation dodge ball.” A fast-flying yoga ball is kind of freaky and surprisingly hard to catch. Less lethal than a kickball.

Gopher 5″ coated foam balls are fun to throw and less un-fun to get pelted with. Get six of these in play at the same time for turbo-action fun.

Utility balls are great all-purpose indoor balls that don’t create a lot of collateral damage.

Personal Note

More balls = more fun. Up to a point. And for some reason it seems to mess with the game dynamics if you use different size balls – for instance two yoga balls and two Gopher balls.

Worst ball for playing dodgeball = a tetherball. Ouch. Second worst = water polo ball.

Other dodgeball variations.

[Source: M Cox Oxford Tours / Games, an older archive that has a lot of less familiar games.]

The game of Charades is huge fun for a group. But some people – particularly high school age people – don’t like being put on the spot. Here are two twists on the classic parlor game that will help you keep things moving, active and tons of fun.

Charades Relay

Divide your group into two teams, and have them line up on opposite sides of a large room. The teams should face away from each other so that neither team can see what the other is doing. There should be enough room so that each team’s Actor can stand in front and perform.

Game play starts with one player from each team racing to the center of the room where you are standing with a list of titles of books, movies or plays. This player must race back to the area in front of their team and quickly act out the title. As soon as a team guesses the title correctly, the next player races to the center of the room and gets a title. The game ends as soon as one team has successfully guessed the titles presented by each of their Actors.

Because the game is fast-paced your Actors will have little time to feel self-concious about standing in front of the group and acting silly.

[Idea courtesy Playworks]

Reverse Charades

This is a simple twist on classic Charades – instead of one person acting out a movie or book title while the rest of the group guesses, you have the entire group doing the acting and one person guessing.

What you need: large, easily readable cards with the title of a book, movie, or play on each one.

To play the game have your Actors form a line or semicircle and your guesser sits or stands in front of the group. You stand behind the guesser and show the group the card, which they then must act out.

To keep your game moving you can combine this with Charades Relay.

[Idea from Youth Leader Stash]