Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

One of the best ways to learn the lyrics to a song is to play it at an event at camp. You will inevitably have a young leader or student come up and say, “don’t you know what that song is about?!?!” On the other hand it is also helpful to actually know the words to the songs you sing along to in club. It is embarrassing when a leader has been singing “Brown High Girl” all these years only to find out that is not what the lyrics are. OK maybe it is not that bad.

I have found a great free program that is linked to my iTunes. It displays the lyrics for whatever song is playing automatically. You can even copy/paste them or whatever you want to do with them. It is a small program that simply does what is supposed to and little more. And again, did I tell you it is free? It is even open-source, for those of you who care.

Just as a reminder, if you are going to do a song in club, you need to have purchased a copy of the sheet music and have it with you.

The video is a little choppy due to my camera only recording in 1 min segments (?!) but this is a great skit…

Here is the plan if you want it.

One of our last clubs in the semester is our “best of” club. I look back at our songs, our mixers, our games, our skits and I put them on a poster. Then for a couple weeks I have kids vote on their favorite ones. Then I pick kids to run them. We also have a student share his or her story.

It really sets kids up for success because they have already seen how the mixer/game/skit works. Also it is a nice break for our leaders near the end of the semester. Though sometimes it is more work to help the students Also it adds buy-in because the kids are looking forward to seeing what they voted for. For the songs I played guitar and picked different kids to lead each song.

Here are our plans from a week ago… Enjoy!

My friend Brian sent me this great idea…

“At Club these past weeks, we have done a game called "What would you do for a buck?"  One kid is chosen by the crowd to do something crazy like drink a blended Happy Meal, and that kid invites all their friends to Club that night and encourages them to bring $1.  $30-$45 is the norm for one crazy stunt at our Club and the student is given the option to keep the cash or turn it in for camp.  If they use it for camp, we double it!

“A boy named Richard came this past week and gave us a $10 bill. We asked if he wanted change.  He confidently smiled and said, "No change.  Keep it all."  You see, Richard was the boy doing the crazy thing that night, and he really wanted to go to camp.  He took his last $10 and turned it in, knowing that money would be doubled for camp.  Richard doubled down.” 

So I posted the Turkey club a little late. Maybe this will be in time for your year end club plans.

The Christmas plan is very simple. But at least it is ready to go! Hope it helps!

Christmas Club

Christmas Songs Handout

So this might be a little late. Maybe you could pull it off this week or next? We had a gobbling good time at Turkey Club. I love Turkey Bowling. Adding finger holes in front of the kids added a nice, and gross, touch to it all.

FYI… I have an exciting idea I’m working on for club and campaigners in the Spring that we can all share. I’m really interested in what your biggest needs are. Let me know if you can.

Here is a fun club that we did using pretty much only clothespins (which you can find cheap at most stores). When I’ve done this with WL be careful because some kids don’t have a high pain tolerance. Let the kids decide if they want to do it (don’t force anyone).

Here is a simple club we did the week before weekend camp….

Camp Club

Very random, but here is our tic tac toe club! One the mixer we had kids hold up their hands over their heads in an "X" or an "O" to keep it a little more organized and obvious.

Here is another fun idea for a club from my friend AJ in SD…

Mountain Man Club

Have everyone dress up in flannel, jeans etc. and have a outdoor mountain man games like on ESPN.

We got a huge wooden pole and went outside to see how far kids could throw it. They had to balance it on and then throw.  Probably best to do it outside.

We also have club at the high school and we’re in a room with huge wrestling mats.  We rolled them up and then set up a log run.  Kids had to try and race down the logs while leaders and kids threw dodge balls at them.  

I can’t remember what else we did, but you can adapt any game you want to fit within the parameters of the Outdoor Games.

(Props to anyone who can name the mountain man in the picture above)