Categorized | Youth Group Games

Favorite Youth Group Games: Human Snowball

Posted on 12 November 2007 by Tim Schmoyer | Trackback link

Youth group gamesIndoor Game; All Ages; 10 or more kids
Last year my wife worked as a receptionist for a company and did a lot of odd jobs besides answering the phone and directing customers. One afternoon I showed up at her workplace to surprise her with lunch and saw a pile of trash bags she was filling with shredded paper. I saw the pile and thought, “There’s no way we can let all that go to waste. It looks like too much fun to play in!” I couldn’t help but think back to being a kid when jumping in a big pile of leaves was the best fun a kid could have. (Of course, the neighbor’s didn’t appreciate their hard earned piles being destroyed punk kids like us.) So my wife got permission for me to take the 13 trash bags of shredded paper to church and here’s what I did:

At our lock-in that weekend, I dumped all the shredded paper in a huge pile in the middle of the room. After forming the students into several teams and giving them each a couple rolls of clear packing tape, I instructed the teams to pick one person to be the human snowball and the rest to cover them in tape, sticky side out. When the alloted “wrapping” time was up, I gave the command and each of the sticky kids jumped into the paper and covered themselves with as much paper as possible. When “rolling” time was up, they got out of the pile of shredded paper and a couple judges deliberated on which team had the most paper stuck to their “ball.”

A couple warnings:

  • Make sure the wrapped kids’ arms are free so they can brace themselves. We had to send a kid to the hospital for stitches because he fell on his face and couldn’t brace himself.
  • Be careful about paper dust. I was surprised how much there was and it actually ruined my video camera within 60 seconds.

Here are some pictures from the game:

Human Snowball Human Snowball

Human Snowball Human Snowball

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1 Comments For This Post

  1. Ruth Elkin Says:

    Hey thanks for this!!!! We used it last night at our Christmas all nighter! We all loved it!



2 Trackbacks For This Post

  1. Anonymous Says:

    links from TechnoratiAt first I gathered everyone together and announced that the game was a giant jigsaw to find the shredded £50 note… they looked somewhat bored at this idea so I explained that we were actually going to make a mountain out of the stuff and makeHuman Snowballsby covering a member of each team in the tape (sticky side out). Was so much fun… here’s the photos: [IMG ] [IMG ] [IMG ] [IMG ] After all that we ended up tossing it in the air and having a “Snowball fight”.

  2. Anonymous Says:

    links from TechnoratiAt first I gathered everyone together and announced that the game was a giant jigsaw to find the shredded £50 note… they looked somewhat bored at this idea so I explained that we were actually going to make a mountain out of the stuff and makeHuman Snowballsby covering a member of each team in the tape (sticky side out). Was so much fun… here’s the photos: [IMG ] [IMG ] [IMG ] [IMG ] After all that we ended up tossing it in the air and having a “Snowball fight”.

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About me: I am married to my beautiful wife, Dana, and together we live in Minnesota where I serve as the youth pastor at our local church. The opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my church.
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