Before the 2016 Olympics get underway in Brazil, why not host your own fun games at your HQ?

Transcription

1 SCOUT GAMES Before the 2016 Olympics get underway in Brazil, why not host your own fun games at your HQ? Give each member of your Group 10 ping-pong balls. Put five or six bowls of varying sizes on the floor and attach numbers to each one, with the largest bowl having the lowest number and the smallest bowl having the highest number. Taking it in turns, the Group have to throw or bounce the balls from a designated spot into the bowls to score points. DOUGHNUT DANGLE Tie ring doughnuts to pieces of string and suspend them from the ceiling or from a long pole, eg a broom handle, balanced on the top of two chairs. The aim of the game is for each competitor to eat a doughnut without using their hands. The person who manages to devour the doughnut the fastest is the winner. LAUGHING GAME Organise your young people so they are seated in a circle and nominate a member of your section to go first. Players then take it in turns to say ha ha, ho ho or hee hee around the circle. If any player starts laughing for real they are knocked out of the game. Keep going with this game until everyone is out the person who keeps a straight face for the longest is the winner. BALLOON RACE Using masking tape, mark out different lanes on the floor. Divide your young people into teams and give each team a balloon. One person sits at each end of the lane. The object of the game is for the Scouts to push the balloon down the track with their head whilst keeping it in their lane. When they reach the end of the lane, the other person has to push the balloon back. SHAKE THE BOX 5 minutes Using some string, attach an empty tissue box around each person s waist. Then put four ping-pong balls in each box. Everybody has to then shake their body in order to free all the balls. The first one to shake all their balls free is the winner. Illustration: Ray Smith BALLS IN THE BOWL

2 TREASURE HUNT RACE Organise your young people up into two lines, making sure that people of varying heights are stood next to each other. Then challenge them to pass a mediumsized balloon down the line using only their chin (no hands allowed). If the balloon is dropped it has to go back to the start of the line. This game is timed and involves tag as well as hunting for treasure. Hide the treasure (chocolate coins) over a large surface area and divide your young people up into teams. After the whistle is blown, one person from each team runs to find a piece of treasure. After they ve located one they should run back to their team and tag their teammate, who then runs to find another and so on until all the treasure is found. Each piece of treasure found is worth one point. The winning team gets to enjoy their treasure as well as that found by the losing team. GUESS THE SWEETIE Get a selection of different sweets together, plus enough paper and pens for your Group. Making sure that the Scouts can t see the packaging, give out one sweet at a time and ask the Scouts to write down what they think the sweet is. They receive a point for each sweet they manage to guess correctly. THE MELTING GAME Divide into two teams and get a tray of ice cubes. The first player picks up an ice cube and tries to melt it as quickly as they can. They are allowed to rub it between their hands or clothes but they can t put it in their mouths, step on it or use any equipment on it. One player can keep a cube for no longer than a few seconds and the first team to melt the cube or tray of cubes wins. EGG ROLL 10 minutes Prepare for this game by hardboiling some eggs. Divide your young people into teams and give each team an egg. From the starting line, the aim is to roll the eggs so that they reach the finish line without cracking. The young people are allowed to push the eggs with their feet or a spoon. Should they wish, they can even get on their hands and knees and push the eggs along with their noses. Illustration: Ray Smith PASS THE BALLOON

3 EARTH DAY ACTIVITIES Help your section to get in touch with nature on Earth Day on 22 April with these fun environmental-themed activities Eencourage your young people to become nature detectives by conducting a biodiversity survey of the area outside your meeting place. Ask them to look for flowers, bugs and weeds using magnifying glasses and record what they find to share with the rest of the Group. INDOOR CAMPFIRE, Cubs To prepare the wood for your campfire, cut a square shape from a pizza box. Gather toilet roll tubes and cut kitchen towel tubes in half to use as logs. Cut brown paper bags into strips to twist into pretend kindling. Glue the tubes to the cardboard. Tear strips of bright red, orange and yellow paper to look like flames and tape them to the cardboard, placing battery-powered tea lights among them to light the flames. NATURE COLLAGE 45 minutes Ask your Group to draw a simple acorn shape on a piece of paper and cut it out. Take your Group outside and ask them to collect items for the collage, for example, nuts, leaves, twigs and bark. Back at the meeting place, ask them to glue the items they found onto the acorn shapes, keeping within the lines so their collage retains the shape of an acorn. BUG HUNT To prepare for this activity, make a list of the bugs you would expect to find outside your meeting place and include an extra column for tick marks. Then ask your young people to go outside with their tick sheets to find the bugs. Tell them to tick off every bug they see. At the end, they should count the ticks to work out which bug they saw most. PHOTO SCAVENGER HUNT To prepare for this activity, take your camera outside the meeting place and take pictures of any Illustration: Michael Driver NATURE DETECTIVE

4 BIRD CRAFT First, take your young people outside and tell them to gather together some twigs and branches. From a garden brochure, find and cut out pictures of birds. With glue, make a tree shape on a piece of paper. Add branches to cover the glue. Ask your Group to stick the cut-out pictures of birds onto branches. Use this as a guide when doing a spot of birdwatching in the garden. EARTH ART Take your Group outside to find and collect small items such as twigs, nuts, pebbles, flower heads (like dandelions) and shells. Staying outside, tell your young people to use the items they found to spell out a word on the ground, it can be their name or a single word or phrase. The words look more effective when a single type of thing is used for one letter, for example if you were spelling out the word scouts, use pebbles for the S, flower heads for C etc. PIZZA PIE FLOWER PEOPLE Gather together stems of grass, twigs, and flower heads from weeds such as dandelions and daisies. The object is to create a face from the items you have collected. On the ground, arrange your twigs into a shape for the head, grass stems for the hair, a leaf for the ears etc. It s amazing how many different looking faces you can make depending on the items you use. PEBBLE WORMS Ask your Group to go outside to collect leaves, nuts, pine cones and other items from nature. The object is to collect several of one thing so that they can be grouped into a pie or pizza shape. Divide your pizza into six segments, using three bamboo sticks. Into each section place all the pine cones, into the next section place all the leaves etc. Decide which items look best next to each other so you end up with a nice-looking pie. Ask your young people to collect pebbles and stones, making sure they are different sizes. Create worm and caterpillar shapes by arranging the stones and pebbles into bodies, with the biggest being for the head. Make eyes, mouths and antennas from daisies, grass stems and leaves. Illustration: Michael Driver trees, leaves, flowers and anything else related to nature that you can see. Print off a set of photos for each scout, or each group, and ask them to study the photos. Tell your young people to go outside and match the items in the photo to the real plants, flowers etc outside. Set a time limit for this activity.

5 Download and print out our magic* paper and amaze your section as you show them how STEP 1: Go to scouts.org.uk/magazine and sneakily download the guide sheet for this activity. Now print it off... STEP 2: Hold the page aloft and tell your friends you are about to amaze them by squeezing your body through it! STEP 3: Now fold the page in half lengthways along the guideline we marked on there for you. STEP 4: Now cut the two outer lines, stopping short of the edge, and then cut along the centre fold between them. STEP 5: Keeping the paper folded, cut along the other lines we marked on both sides of the paper and open! STEP 6: Step through the paper circle and take a bow. Now try the trick again with a blank piece of paper. *not really