Indoor Game; All Ages; 10 or more kids

This game idea is submitted by Russell Martin, a worship leader in Texarkana, Texas.

Gather many rolls of toilet paper and put them in the middle of the room. Divide the group into two teams and put them on either side of the room. Play normal dodge ball rules. If you hit someone, they are out. If they catch the “ball,” you throw you are out, etc. After round one then play again. This time, however, an adult leader gets to play god. The leader tells the youth that at any time they can tell someone they are out, or put someone back in no matter what. Whatever the leader says goes!

After the game the youth will probably complain about it not being fair, about you not being fair. Use this time to talk about God being fair and just.

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Indoor Game; All Ages; 4 or more kids

We played this a couple weeks ago in both our Jr. High and Sr. High ministries. The facial expressions and reactions are priceless!

The game is pretty simple. I broke students up into teams of about 4-5 people, projected an image of 20 Jelly Beans from PowerPoint, gave each team a corresponding answer sheet and a zip-lock bag of Jelly Beans. The object was to try to identify all 20 Jelly Bean flavors within 10 minutes.

It sounded fine until the kids realized that half the Jelly Beans were sweet (Banana and Peach) and half were gross (Moldy Cheese and Baby Wipes) and there was no way to tell which was which until they actually ate it. One of our Jr. Highers got the Vomit flavored bean stuck in her throat and almost puked! It was awesome! Others ran to the water fountain screaming! lol

I got the Bean Bazooled boxes by Jelly Bean, but unfortunately their site was out of stock, so I purchased them from this shop on eBay instead ($2.25/box with $5.50 S&H total for 1-18 boxes).

Bean Bazooled Answer Sheet
Bean Bazooled PowerPoint

SUBMIT YOUR GAME: If you have a favorite youth group game, tell me about it. If I publish it, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

Indoor Game; All Ages; 4 or more kids

Supplies: One Twister mat for every 4-5 students. One Twister spinner.

Tonight with the Jr. High students we played Twister with a twist. Instead of laying the mats flat on the floor, I taped them to the walls of the gym and we played it standing up. Since the competition was your mat versus all the other mats, I allowed some of the students on teach team to sit out and support teammates against the wall. They helped hold people up, acted as human stools and supported those who were falling. It worked pretty well for the most part. It worked better when I allowed everyone to stand and substituted “left foot” and “right foot” for “left ear” and “right ear.” Eventually, though, we took the mats off the wall and played a normal game of Twister on the floor.

Here are some pictures of it from my cell phone.

SUBMIT YOUR GAME: If you have a favorite youth group game, tell me about it. If I publish it, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

Ben Schnipper of Mexico, Missouri submitted this game. Sounds hilarious! Thanks, Ben!

Indoor Game; All Ages; 10 or more kids

Supplies: Twinkies, babyfood, food injector (preferably one with a a sharp pointed end)

Unwrap all the twinkies and fill the food injector with baby food. Insert the food injector 3/4 of the way into the Twinkie long ways and at the same time inject the baby food and pull the injector out. Do this to all of the Twinkies except four leaving those normal. Place an equal number of Twinkies on two plates placing two of the normal ones on each plate and place in the fridge for a couple hours.

Split your students into two teams and tell them you are going to have a Twinkie eating contest. When you say go one member of each team must race to their plate eat a Twinkie completely and then race back and tag the next person. First team to clean their plate wins.

SUBMIT YOUR GAME: If you have a favorite youth group game, tell me about it. If I publish it, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

Indoor or Outdoor Game; All Ages; 10 or more kids

This game idea was submitted via email by Pastor Jon Eagleson. It looks hilarious! Just watch this video to get an idea of how it works.

Play a regular game of soccer, but with one twist. Everyone has to use binoculars! You could use the binoculars to magnify everything or even flip them over to make everything really really small but still visible, with no doubt the same effect.

It might be hard to buy a lot of binoculars for something like this, so maybe try using paper-towel rolls instead. It doesn’t have the magnifying effect, but it’s much more cost effective.

SUBMIT YOUR GAME: If you have a favorite youth group game, tell me about it. If I publish it, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

Indoor or Outdoor Game; Sr. High Only; 20 or more kids

While I would never recommend the TV show MXC (Most Extreme Challenge) to anyone due to the dialog’s sexual overtones, I happened to see this on TV and thought it would make a great youth group game. Rather than explaining it, just watch this video clip I put together:

We played this tonight at Sr. High youth group and it was a blast! I bought two 10 foot poles of PVC for a couple bucks each, which worked okay except that some of our taller guys could easily jump and snag the flag without too much difficulty, so I’d recommend using a pole that’s closer to 15 feet tall. Also make sure you have everyone take off their shoes and jewelry before playing.

SUBMIT YOUR GAME: If you have a favorite youth group game, tell me about it. If I publish it, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

Indoor 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:

SUBMIT YOUR GAME: If you have a favorite youth group game, tell me about it. If I publish it, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

Indoor Game; All Ages; 10 or more kids
I accidentally ran across this game on my computer while searching for something else. Dunno where I originally got it from, but the document was last modified in 2004, so it’s a couple years old. Sounds like a fun game!

Alphabet Game
Fill a little paper bag with strips of paper, each with a funny sentence written on it. Each sentence must start with a different letter of the alphabet. (For example, “Aardvarks sure do look tasty” and “Boy do you look terrible!”) Fill another little paper bag with numbers. Everyone picks a number. The two people who picked the 1 and 2 go first. Player 1 picks out a slip of paper with a sentence on it and reads it aloud. Player 2 must respond with a sentence that starts with the next letter of the alphabet AND makes sense. For example, player 1 says, “Stop! You have a turtle on your shoulder.” Player 2 responds, “That turtle is my pet.” Player 1 replies, “Under what circumstances should you have such a strange pet?” and so on. The first person who either responds with a sentence that does not start with the following letter of the alphabet or who can’t come up with a sentence within the time limit (like 10 seconds or so) loses. Players 3 and 4 then battle one another. When all people have gone, have the winners battle one another. You could also do this with two teams going against one another.

Here’s the list I apparently wrote up for my youth group a while back:

• Aardvarks sure do look tasty
• Boy do you look terrible!
• Can you fit your whole fist in your mouth?
• Dunking graham crackers in pickle juice is my favorite!
• Everyone looks pretty fantabulous today
• Finding Nemo is the worst movie ever!
• Good going, look what you did!
• How is it possible to have a civil war?
• I like how it tickles when the hair on my legs stand up.
• Just you and me now, pal!
• Kaite told me that yellow snow tastes better than normal snow.
• Let me see you lick your nose
• My toenail polish is prettier than yours!
• Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.
• Ostriches are very flexible.
• Put your spandex on and let’s go running
• Quiet, my imaginary friend is talking.
• Ritchie is the cutest boy ever!
• Sucking on your toes is yummy.
• Tickling Pastor Rol is not recommended.
• Understand that my name is NOT Seymour Butts!
• Very few midgets can run faster than 10 mph.
• While you were out I decided to…
• X-rays make me feel invisible, like Big Bird!
• Yesterday I talked with a guy whose breath was worse than Tim’s!
• Zip along there, speedy little fella!

SUBMIT YOUR GAME: If you have a favorite youth group game, tell me about it. If I publish it, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

Indoor Game; All Ages; 10 or more kids
We just played this last night at Sr. High youth group and had a blast! Split everyone into teams of 5-8 kids and give each team a mattress. Instruct the teams to select one person to be the surfer. Everyone else are the “rollers.” Line up the teams at one end of a large room and have the rollers lay side-by-side underneath that mattress with the surfer on top. When you start the race, all the “rollers” roll together toward the opposite end of the room, carrying their surfer on top. In order to make it across, when the last roller is free that person jumps up and lays down in front of the mattress and continues to roll until he/she is the last roller, at which point they repeat the process again. The surfer may not touch the ground at any time. If they do, the team must go back to the starting line and start over. The first team to reach the opposite wall and return back to the starting line wins. Any pushing or pulling of the mattress if strictly prohibited.

Here’s two pictures of the game from my cell phone camera last night:

SUBMIT YOUR GAME: If you have a favorite youth group game, tell me about it. If I publish it, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

Indoor Game; All Ages; 12 or more kids
This is a fast, active game that works better with larger groups (12 or more people) and needs a fair amount of space that students run around.

Supplies needed:
One Rubber Chicken

How to play:
Divide the group into 2 equal teams. Give one team the rubber chicken. As soon as you say “go” the team that has the chicken quickly lines up behind the person holding the chicken and the chicken is passed over one person’s head, under the next person’s legs, so it goes over, under, over, under all the way to the end of the line. Then the whole team yells “Chuck the Chicken!” Meanwhile, the other team (the team without the chicken) gets into a huddle when you say “go” and one person runs around the huddled up team as many times as they can before the other team chucks the chicken. It’s a good idea to have a leader counting how many times the youth runs around their team — this is how many points that team gets during that round. As soon as that team hears the other team “chuck the chicken,” they stop huddling/running and they all run over to pick up the chicken. They then line up and do what the first team did (chicken over, under, over, under), while the other team does what they just did (huddle and have one person run around while another leader counts their points). You do this for a pre-determined number of rounds. Three or five rounds have worked out well for our group. The team with the most points at the end wins!

Thanks, Abi!
This game is provided by Abi Bourckel, a youth worker in Ellicott City, Maryland. Check out her blog at “Not all who wander are lost…”

SUBMIT YOUR GAME: If you have a favorite youth group game, tell me about it. If I publish it, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.