Everyone is seated in a circle on the floor. As music is played, the bag of clothes is handed around quickly without hesitation. When the music is stopped, whoever is holding the bag must put on the item of clothing that they pick out first. This game lasts until the clothes are gone. Whoever has the most articles of clothing on in the end wins.
(HT: http://www.youthpastor.com/games/index.cfm/FuseAction/ResultsNew.htm”)
This is hillarious. Works best with groups of 10+. Have a youth worker get 3 volunteers from the group and exit room. Have another youth worker explain to the rest of the group that each student is going to come in, sit in the chair and act something out. They are to secretely pretend that the student in the chair is using the John. Have the youth worker tell the 3 volunteers that they are to go in one at a time, sit in the chair, and pretend to do whatever you ask such as riding a roller coaster, experiencing an earthquake, or my favorite, holding their breath as long as they can and then breathing in the air above them (like they are submersed in water up to their nose). After each student has acted out their scene, tell them what the other students imagined them to be doing!! Using the John!!! Great way to start out a youth event.
Divide into teams of 4 or 5. Everyone on the team searches through their own pockets, wallets, purses, etc. The group tries to come up with one possession which begins with each letter of the alphabet. The winning team is the one to have objects representing the most letters.
The Point: Teamwork, cooperation, and creativity.
Simply announce that you want everyone lined up across the room by birth date. Only catch: no talking. Once they are all lined up, ask certain people their birthdays just to be sure.
You can have them do the same thing, but by shoe size, height, etc.
The Point: Communication
Same as “Rock-Scissors-Paper”, only you use your whole body. Play it up huge, having someone demonstrate each:
Ninja: guy in karate stance yelling “waaaaa!”
Gun: hold finger gun and say “BANG!”
Gorilla: arms in air & beating chest, saying “ooo, ooo, ahh, ahh, ahh!”
Ninja beats gun.
Gun beats gorilla.
Gorilla beats ninja.
If there’s a tie, both are out.
Keep going until all are eliminated; fun to find a champ. It helps to have the students who are out to go to the outside and the people still playing in the middle.
Groups of 20-30 sit or stand in a circle. One person is in the middle and points to someone in the circle and says either “Curly,” “Mo,” or “Larry”. The person pointed to must respond with a name before the person in the middle can count out loud to ten. The name the person shouts depends on the name the person in the middle says:
“Curly”: say the name of the person on your right.
“Moe”: say your own name.
“Larry”: say the name of the person on your left.
If they succeed, the person in the middle stays and repeats the process with someone else in the circle. If they fail, they change places with the person in the middle.
After a while, you may want to add a second person to the middle. After five minutes, rotate half of each group to another group, or combine two groups and put a second person in the middle.
The Point: Remembering names of people in your group.
Give everyone a number. They have to arrange themselves in numerical order by communicating with each other without speaking or holding up fingers. They make up their own sub-language or sign-language and it often is pretty amusing. For Round Two, have people arrange themselves in order of birth or in calendar months (like the game, Mute Organization). [youth for Christ]
This is a good game to divide into teams for the day/evening. Have pre-made cards for more than enough kids. Come up with as many animals as you want teams that night(If you want four teams, have four animals). If you predict 35 kids that night make forty cards, four groups of ten. Each group of ten cards will have a particular animal written on it (so you will have 10 chicken cards, 10 cow cards, 10 donkey cards and 10 pig cards). Hand out cards randomly to the kids and tell them to not tell anyone their animal. When you give the signal, have them make the sound of their animal as loud as possible until they find their entire group. First group to totally find each other wins.
This is also a great way to split your group up into teams for more games!
Put a twist on the game by putting in only ONE card that says “donkey” and giving it to a very secure student (but don’t tell him/her they’re the only donkey).
After all of the animals have found each other, there will still be one poor kid out there Hee-Hawing his head off to no avail!
I learned this one in acting class. Have two people sit in two chairs in front of the group. They will start acting out any clean, unoffensive scenario, like maybe driving a car or eating popcorn and watching a movie. Since this is not charades, they can talk. The conversations can be pretty hilarious. Then someone, anyone from the group yells “Freeze!” and both people freeze right where they are. The person who yelled “Freeze!” goes up and tags one of the two people on the shoulder. That person has to sit down and the new person takes their place, and starts acting out some other scenario without telling the other person what it is. They have to try and go along with it! Be careful though because this can quickly evolve into a WWF Smackdown! The game continues pretty much until you get tired of it. New people keep yelling “Freeze!” and tagging one of the two people and taking their place. It’s really fun to see the creativity that kids come up with…
Everyone writes their name on a piece of paper and folds it up. Put all the pieces of paper in a hat or bowl. Everyone takes a new paper out of the hat. Now that is their new name, and they can’t show it to anyone. Everyone is sitting in a circle with part of this circle containing a couch or 4 seats designated as the “couch”. The couch must have 2 girls and 2 boys seated on it in the beginning. The object of the game is to get all girls or all boys on the couch. It is good if you have a fairly even split between the boys and the girls if not you can assign some girls to be boys or vice versa. In your circle of chairs there should be an empty one. The person on the right of the empty chair attempts to call off a boy or a girl depending on what they are. If they are a boy they will want to call off a girl so a boy could replace them on the couch. They call a name of someone in the group but remember no one knows anyone’s name yet. Who gets called goes and sits in the empty chair and exchanges names with the one who called them. Now the one on the right of the new empty chair calls someone. It continues this way until you have all girls or all boys on the couch. It really makes you think because names are changed so often. No one should be giving clues to the person whose turn it is.
