5 Activities to do with your Youth
Most people who minister in youth work will be familiar with the struggle of bringing fun, engaging but appropriate activities to their teens. The struggle to be informative yet engaging. To try to enrich their week, without being accused of falling into the uncool category. Getting some teenagers to do anything can be difficult especially if they are going through the ‘I’m too cool to join in’ phase, but know that what you are doing is helpful, and will have an impact, even if you cannot see it.
Here are five activities you can do with your youth to get them involved.
Number one: Board game night.
Board games are a great way of getting the most unlikely people to socialize. Whether through teamwork or competitiveness, I have rarely seen anyone refuse to succumb to the calling of board games. They are a fantastic way to include all ages of youth (11-18) depending on the games you pick. You might even find when playing a more strategic or complicated game, the older will take the younger under their wing.
One we play at our youth nights often is, ‘Pay Day’. It is a simple game of moving around a calendar month, collecting bills, having birthdays, and receiving post. It is simple enough that our younger ones can take part without too much help, but still has a strategic element that appeals to our older ones.
Another great one is ‘pass the pigs’, so simple yet the most fun. It doesn’t require any skill, strategies or even teamwork, but is purely a game of chance. Each player takes turns to roll the two pigs and depending on what position the pigs fall in, decides the number of points awarded to that player. The one with the highest score at the end is the winner.
Number two: team building activities.
Most people will be familiar with these types of activities/ challenges either from a schooling environment or other team orientated groups. The aim is to get your teens to interact with each other but without the pressure to think up a conversation with someone new. They all have a common ground to build, fix or solve whatever activity it is.
The first example of an activity that has worked for our youth is building a tower of uncooked spaghetti and marshmallows. We set the challenge of who could build the biggest structure, without it falling and they could only use what was provided on the tables. It is fair to say, both teams did an excellent job and made tall, secure structures. A word of warning though, this task is a messy one, the marshmallows are very sticky, so I recommend using gloves.
A second example is a form of ping pong. Now you don’t need a table tennis table to do this, any old table will work, but you will need at least three ping pongs (somehow they always manage to lose some), twenty large plastic cups, enough packets of sweets to place one in each cup, and some paper to cut up and write questions.
You will need to write the questions before hand, and these can be anything from ‘what’s your favourite colour?’ to ‘if you wanted to be any sea creature what would it be?’
You can make the questions as easy or deep as you like. The cups can be set out on the table however you like, as long as ten are on one side and ten on the other. A pyramid is a good one for a slightly easier game or you can spread them far and wide to make it harder.
You then split the youth into two teams, one on either side of the table, and they then take turns to try and bounce the ping pong into the cups at the opposite end of the table. If they get the ball in one of the cups, the opposing team player standing there must answer the question inside the cup and the thrower gets to keep the sweets.
This game can be adapted in multiple ways, you can use jokes or tasks instead of questions, you don’t have to use sweets. You can even make it more competitive by issuing a challenge; the first team to get rid of all the opposing teams cups wins.
Number three: Crafts
Crafts are again another classic activity for any age, but I feel like it is still worth a mention as all of our youth, regardless of age or gender, have taken part and enjoyed the crafts we do. For those with shyer youth, this activity is great as it is a way of gathering them all together in one space, working next to each other but doesn’t force conversation if they don’t want to.
Here are some examples of the successful crafts we’ve done.
- Rock painting
- Card pumpkins (a great autumn activity)
- Christmas card making (can also be done at Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Easter)
- Diamond pictures (a slightly pricier option)
- Origami
- Hammer beads (or aqua beads or anything along those lines)
- Loom band making (or any form of bracelet- the loom bands were a big hit with our boys)
- Toilet roll reindeers.
Most of these crafts are easy to organize, set up and explain. And each one listed above has been enjoyed by youth from ages 11 to 15 and by both boys and girls.
Number four: Cookie decorating
Another easy and fun-filled activity. The most recent cookies we decorated were pumpkins for our autumn themed session. This went down a treat with all our youth, especially once I had informed them that they were allowed to eat said cookies after they had finished decorating.
A member of our team baked the cookies but for an easier option shop bought ones are just as good! Just remember to check for allergies within your youth beforehand.
For the decorations, we used a mixture of shop bought icing tubes and icing made from icing sugar and water with food coloring added in to make fun colours. The rest of the decorations such as the sprinkles etc were also shop bought.
Even with the older youth, this was still a fairly messy activity, so be warned!
Number five: special one-time activities
Now, everything above are all examples of things you can do with your youth at your everyday, normal sessions. Nothing that is too difficult to set up, or too costly and can be done as regularly as you like.
This last suggestion is for the more special sessions that you plan, a treat that isn’t as easy to do every week. We like to do some of these things every now and then to give them something extra to look forward to. This year we did a few of them in the summer holidays.
Firstly, tie dying. Now this is a more costly activity as paints will need to be bought, and T-shirts or whatever you choose to dye will also need to be sourced. But this activity is definitely worth the work. It was a great way to engage the kids in something different that required their own creativity to manifest as they designed their T-shirts. (This is another messy activity, I recommend covering whatever surface you use, and gloves will be required.)
Another idea is to have a water fight (unless you have an indoor space that is okay to get wet, this is an outdoor, summertime session.) You can purchase water pistols or other types of pumps/ shooters, or you can go down the water balloon route, or you can use good old fashion cups and plastic bowls to drench each other with. (Remember to ask the teens to bring a spare set of clothes and a towel each so you do not have to send them home soaked.)
And finally, the third idea is bowling. This is again a pricier option but if money is a concern, there are plenty of fundraisers you can include your teens in to raise the money for this or any of the activities. This is another activity that we found brought our teens together and encouraged some who didn’t socialize with each other, to start talking. It encourages a healthy dose of competitiveness, especially if you youth leaders join in, but we also found that it was giving the teens a chance to praise each other and cheer one another on as they watched their friends do well, or even when they didn’t do as well.
If going to a bowling alley is not an option, then this can be recreated in your youth space by sourcing garden pins and a ball.
I hope this list has helped get your own creative thoughts flowing with new ideas of activities to do with your youth. And I hope you have as much success as we have with these fun ideas to get the teens involved.