Help for Local Messy Games
YLHelp may have a lot of experience and ideas, but your ideas are better, and there are things YLHelp doesn’t know much about! I could use your help…
What are your tips for a great messy games for a local club?
I’ve run countless messy games at camp, even back in the day when we would rent out local camps and I went and bought everything myself (including clearing out entire Walmarts of their $0.99 shaving cream). When I’ve done recent summer programs, we’ve tended to use a lot of beet pulp since it is pretty cheap, it enlarges easily, and cleans up easier.
I know there has been a general dislike for wasting food that is edible, and that sounds reasonable. Shaving cream is good, but it adds up quickly.
So, once again: What are your tips for a great messy games for a local club?
PS: The specific event I’m planning is a WL club event in a local park.
Comment, tweet or email your ideas, thanks!
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We did some messy games in a local park a few years ago at PVWL. It worked out very well, and created awesome memories. We also learned a lot from it. Here’s a few observations from it:
1) We did contact work the night before the messy games by having a few kids help us prep the messy things. They helped make flower bombs, fill water balloons, and created a slime substance for the messy games. It was great contact work because the kids that came to help felt an ownership in wyldlife.
2) We used a lot of different, cheap items. Each leader was asked to bring two items to keep costs low. Some of the items we used were: flower bombs (tissues+flower), Slime (food coloring+glue+there might be another material that I can’t remember to make this), water ballons filled with random things, Ketchup/mustard, water balloon launchers, non-menthol shaving cream.
3) There is such a thing as too gross! One leader brought anchovies or some other type of gross fish in a container because he could not find non-mentol shaving cream.. long story short, when we pulled out the fish there were kids and leaders throwing up on the sides of the park.. Thank goodness is was a guys’ event!
4) It is extremely important to bring lots of water and towels to wash off. We also told kids to bring an extra pair of clothes to change into after the messy games. Leaders brought extra clothes in case kids forgot.
5) Pictures are important! We used this event as an outreach event. With that being said, we immediately posted pictures on Facebook after the event to show how awesome WL is.
6) The messy-games moved really fast for us. It may have been a good idea to take a little bit of time to come up with team names, chants, and do stuff like that to extend the event.
Paint Wars. Great for All-Area event.
Kids form teams based on their school. Great to have a few schools, but at least 2. Leaders for each school give paint out to kids in their respective corner, squeezing bottles of water-based paint into the hands of the kids. Of course, the paint is their school colors. Their goal is to get as much of their schools’ colors on the other teams. You can use paint powder also. It might be a little expensive, but WAY FUN.