Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

I’ll keep this short and sweet. Post It Note club will stick with the kids for a long time. If you got the pun in there then you would probably like most of my jokes because they are almost all like that, really punny.

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My friend Amber from Malibu (California, not the resort camp where none of us can ever get assignments, work crew or summer staff at…But I’m not bitter) sent this great club idea along. If you didn’t catch the title, it is a spin on the Man vs. Wild TV show.

For our Man vs Wyld…Life club we met at a park (you could probably do this in a large backyard) after dark. Everything was done in extremely limited light or else in the dark. We had battery operated lights (they have strobe and spot lights that are surprisingly powerful!) from the dollar store that we used when we needed light. After playing sardines we brought kids to a lit place in the park for the raffle, announcements, new kids and club talk. I think you could do a cricket spit or gross food games with this club theme…our kids won’t do that so I didn’t put it in, although I think it would’ve been funny! We had a lot of fun and it was a really easy club to pull off. Make sure if you do it at a park that you get a permit so that the park officials and/or police don’t kick you out of the park after dark. Whenever a kid didn’t want to do something I would simply tell them that Bear Grylls would do it…that was a pretty good motivator! We did the following games (see the file below)

PS Amber’s husband in a sitcom on TV… seriously!

Here is the club we are doing tonight. We will have different kinds of cereal out when kids can arrive to make their own bowl of cereal. Kids are dressing up in PJs. We also might have on some cartoons. We’ll see how it goes!

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My good friend Jen from Williams, AZ, yes that Williams, AZ that has Lost Canyon… sent me this club plan for X Games Club.

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I’ve posted Christmas club ideas in the past HERE and HERE.

But I dug up some more stuff too. Enjoy!

Who might be thinking, “jerk club”? I have a bunch of jerks in my club. Well, no I am talking about the dance called, “The Jerk”, or the “Reject” is what I think it is technically called.

When I was at camp this summer, I noticed that tons of kids would do this dance. So we had “Jerk Club” and it was a ton of fun.

I ’m sure many of you already know all about YLPlaybook, but if you don’t, you should check it out! It is a growing collection of games, mixers, run-ons, and all kinds of stuff. They are all tagged for easy review.

One thing I’m really impressed with about YLPlaybook is they really keep adding to their content. Some resources lose relevance of usefulness if they never add anything new, but YLPlaybook is doing a great job adding new content.

Here some games I saw recently that I thought were pretty good:

You’ve Got Something On Your Forehead Game

Sponge On The Chair Game

Hobby Hoax Game

Thar’s A Bar Game

Caramel Onion Game

Psychological Sit-Up Game

Wheel Of Misfortune Game

Face-to-Face Balloon Relay game

Slurp and Spit Game

String Mania Game

Clothes Relay Game

Back To Back Mixer

Pockets Mixer

Here are some resources that will jump-start your planning if you haven’t already…

My preliminary semester club plan:

Some plans from my friend Hugh in NC:

Also, a great resource for club games, mixers, run-ons, etc. is the YL Playbook. Aaron and his crew have done a great job with it. 

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.

I hope your summer was great. I hope to post some ideas and lessons learned over the summer from camp, assignments, campaigners, etc.

In the mean time, the Fall semester is upon us. In my area school started this week and I have been meeting and catching up with leaders non-stop.

With club looming, I know we all are having team club planning sessions. My club had one last week. I’ll be posting our new clubs as we prepare them.

I took some time to put together a club planner with Monday club dates and an entire semester of clubs planned. I did this using some of the clubs we used last year. If you are looking for ideas, I suggest you print this out and bring it to your team meeting. If you have ideas or clubs from last year, send them my way so we can share them.

Enjoy!

Fall Club Planner and Full Club Plans

(Note: some of the details on each club may not perfectly fit the week. For example the club talks are not in order on the individual club sheets.)