High School Literary Character Brawl pt. 3

Welcome to 2013 everyone =D How were your holidays?

As promised before the New Year, here is the postmortem for our High School Literary Character Brawl. Don't get me wrong. The program was awesome, and all the participants said it was a lot of fun...but that doesn't mean it can't be done better!

1. Snacks Appreciated
Apparently some food (pizza, maybe?), and some water pitchers would have been life safers.

2. Create Character-Specific events
Our participants suggested that we make the Literary Character Brawl even more of an integral part to the program. So instead of choosing random games, have participants choose their characters before the program, and then come up with games that would be appropriate for those characters. We could even offer special points if the character won their own event.

3. A Little Less Brawl
While the beat-each-other-with-pool-noodle brawls were fun, they got a little repetitive after the first time. It was also a little frustrating to do girls versus guys, so do gender specific rounds. Most of our events were physical the first time around, so one suggestion was to mix the skills needed so the most fit person wasn't winning everything.

4. More Mind Games
The riddles were enjoyed, but differentiating between trivia, riddles, and puns would have been helpful. It would also be cool to have riddles from specific places like fantasy books or Star Wars. Going back to less physical activities, games like poker, blackjack, or other card games could help also.

Got any other suggestions? Let me know =D

What Wii Sports Taught Me

Some things I found out while doing our monthly gaming program:

• When you have fifteen kids at a program, having more than 1 Wii is a good idea.
• Motion Plus is required to play Wii Sports: Resort.
• My projector just doesn't work with video game consuls.

But, other than that, we had a really great time. Played some boxing, some baseball, and some bowling on Wii Sports. Meanwhile, there were random card games, Battleship, and chinese checkers going on.

Ultimately, I didn't think the program would get big enough to require two Wiis, so I only found one. But, I turned out to be wrong. This is a fantastic problem to have, too many kids, but it meant we didn't get as much time with the game as each participant would have liked.

Even though I'm definitely going to be getting more Wiis for next month's program, I was really impressed with the patience of the kids that came. Each of them had time for only one sport on the game, but they were generous by letting others go, and spending the waiting time playing other games with each other.

So, even though my lesson was learned, we still had a really great time at the program, and I still encourage folks to get a gaming program going; even if you only have one Wii to work with :)