Program Time FIllers: End Time Ain't Here Yet

Ever had an awesome program where everything went so swimmingly that you had some extra time before the parent's came to pick up their teens? Ever had a mediocre program where you should have prepared that one more activity? Ever had an awful program where things just aren't working?

Well, first of all you are not alone (as I've done all of them before lol), and second of all, I figured some fun and easy time fillers might be useful.

Just Dance 
Attach a projector to a computer, grab some speakers, and search YouTube for Just Dance. Users have screen-capture videos of many of the songs, and all of your teens can dance at the same time instead of having to wait for a controller.

Airband Awesomeness 
Attach a projector to a computer, and get some speakers set up. Ask students what songs they would like to hear. Encourage them to pretend they are the band members, just using air instead of real instruments. Blow-up guitars, fake microphones, and rulers as drumsticks also help. 

Zombie Tag 
One or two participants start out as zombies. They have to walk and growl like zombies, and try to tag other players (without running as Zombies don't have that much bone tissue and muscle left). As soon as a player gets tagged, they also become zombies. The last one or two people to get tagged are the zombies for the next round. 

Library Craziness

Let the Teens have fun with library resources. Do a book cart drag race, tallest book tower challenge, or a rolling chair obstacle course.

Minute to Win It

You have 60 seconds to complete a challenge of awesome and sometimes hilarious actions. Many of these games only require simple supplies, and are easy to explain. It also helps that their website comes complete with videos, supply lists, and explanations of the activities.

 

High School Literary Character Brawl pt. 2!

As promised in the first High School Literary Character Brawl post, I'm going to talk about the other challenges that we did throughout the night. But before I do, let me tell you a little bit more about how we set up the event.

When everyone walked in, we gave each of them a Brawl Card, and a Character Card. Their Character Card held their life points and defense points (each type of point was a paper clip), and the Brawl Cards were used to determine who would challenge who. Basically, the Brawlmaster (Yours Truly) would randomly shuffle the Brawl Cards, and lay them out in pairs. The pairs would then battle each other in the Brawl Round, or in the challenges in-between.

Each of our Brawl rounds had a slightly different stage. The first round, we gave the characters range of the whole room. Second round they were limited to half of the room, and the third round they were limited to a rectangle of tables that resembled a fencing match. After all of our participants had faced off in the appropriate round, we would move to our secondary challenges.

After our first Brawl round, we played some dodge ball. Brawl Cards were randomly assigned side 1 or side 2, and the side with the last players standing got coin. Those who got hit had to give up a life point. Secondly we tried a Book Cart Drag Race (some things are better shown than talked about). The losers in their heat had to give up a life point as well.

We then did a second round of Brawls with only half of the room available, and then moved onto Ninja (the link brings you to rules and an explanation). The short explanation of this game is taking turns trying to hit another player's hands. If you do, your opponent is out. After that, I had found some riddles (simply typed "riddles" into Google) that were ridiculous and fun. If you answered correctly, you got one coin.

Once our riddles were complete, the only thing left was Brawling in a rectangle of tables, and then counting up our spoils. The event was an absolute ton of fun as I said earlier, but there are always things that one learns while doing programs. So next installment, I'm going to give some participant suggestions that would make the event even more awesome!

P.S. As our next 2 weeks are filled with Holidays (YAY!) my next installment will be the week of January 7th. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!