This Pack includes: Glow in the Dark Games Activity Ideas How to Guide > Northamptonshire Battalion
Introduction Transform your meeting night into a cool Glow in the Dark themed evening. Inside this pack are some great ideas for games and activities which you could do. What is inside this pack? Inside this pack is a variety of games and activities all of which can be transformed into glow in the dark themed fun. All the activities have been thought out and come with instructions and tips on how to run. The activities & games are designed to offer an exciting and different night of Boys Brigade, which your young people should really enjoy. Activities and games include: Glow in the Dark Parachute Games Light Drawing Noughts & Crosses with Glow Sticks Glow in the Dark Potted Sports How do I use it? Inside this pack are games & activity ideas. You just need to plan which activities and games you want to use and decide in which order you want to do them. You may not have time to do all of the activities and games so you will need to choose the ones which suit your young people best. Each game and activity page lists the equipment which you ll need. Please check these lists before your evening and ensure you have everything you need. To help you plan your evening, each activity and game has age suggestions and difficulty levels to help you decide which activities to run with your young people.
Getting Ready Before you run the evening and play your games & activities, here are a few tips for running the perfect glow themed evening. What do I need? Many of the games & activities included in this pack use equiptment most companies already have. These pieces of equiptment are then transformed using glowsticks which you can find in your local pound shop. When this pack was tested, we found packs of 18 glowsticks for 1 each. For the activities listed in this pack, we used 15 packs of glowsticks, meaning we had 270 sticks which cost 15. In addition to the glowsticks, you could also look at purchasing additional glow products for your young people, depending on your budget. Some examples of glow products available are below: Glow Sticks LED Balloons Glow Glasses Glow in the Dark Shapes Glow Stick Beach Ball Preparation Many glowsticks may only last 2 or 3 hours before fading, so remember not to set them off too early. You may therefore need some extra help on your glow night to get everything ready as, depending on how adventurous you are being, it can take a while to set up.
Lighting up your Young People Before you get started, let your young people get ready for the night by making glow stick bracelets & necklaces for them to wear for the evening. This activity has two purposes. Firstly it s fun for your young people to do and lets them get involved with the theme of Glow in the Dark, by wearing glowsticks. However by getting your young people to wear glowsticks, this means you are lighting up your room for your activities and it is a great way of seeing where your young people are once you turn off the lights. To make bracelets and necklaces out of glowsticks, you will need to purchase the packs of thin glowsticks available in most pound shops. Most packs also come with connectors inside which will let your young people make the glow in the dark shapes for them to wear. Packs of glow sticks (Ideally at least 6 per person) Connectors (These should come in your glow stick packs) Age - Anchors / Juniors Cost - 1 for 18 sticks Time - 5-10 Mins Difficulty - 1/5 Give them a few minutes to create their glow in the dark jewellery. Once completed, you can turn out the lights and you should now have a room lit up with glowsticks, which your young people are wearing.
Parachute Games Reinvent some of your classic parachute games by playing them in the dark, lit up only by glowsticks and LED balloons. Parachute games are a favourite activity at many Boys Brigade companies and here is a great way of reinventing those games for your glow in the dark night. Parachute LED Balloons (roughly 8 for 15) With your room now lit up with your young people wearing their glowsticks, you should be able to turn off your lights and play these games in the dark. (Should you need additional lighting, then you could give leaders torches to help keep your games safe) Most companies will already have games they like to play with the parachute, so if you can adapt your normal games to the dark then go for it! Here are two parachute games that do work well in the dark. Age - Anchors / Juniors Cost - 8 for 15 Balloons Time - 10-15 mins Difficulty - 2/5 Swap if - Get your young people to lift and lower the parachute as a group. Once they are in a rhythm shout out swap if.. and call out a category such as - wearing a red glow stick, go to XYZ primary school, born in July, aged 7 and so on. Everyone who fits the category must let go of their handle and run underneath the parachute to a new position. LED Balloons - If you purchase some LED balloons, then you could set a number of challenges with these. Place the balloons on the parachute and challenge the group to get the balloons off in the quickest time Volleyball - Split the parachute in half and try and get your young people to get the balloon to fly off over the opposite teams side. This could be done with one balloon or multiple balloons.
Noughts & Crosses Take this very simple and well known game and make it completely new, with just a few glowsticks and a dark room. Noughts and crosses is a game all your young people would have played before, but have they ever played it in the dark using glow sticks?! Firstly you will need to set up your grid. To do this, connect a few glowsticks together to form a line - you will need four lines in total. Now just lay those lines on the floor to make a grid (As seen in the pictures) For your noughts, connect two glowsticks together into a hoop. For your crosses you will just need two loose glowsticks which can be laid onto the floor in a x shape. Glow sticks - Around 30 should be enough for the game, plus any extra needed for lighting obstacles Age - Anchors / Juniors Cost - Low ( 2-3) Time - 10-15 mins Difficulty - 1/5 Play the game in two teams. To make it more fun, create an obstacle course between their start line and the O & X s grid. For example you could cello tape glow sticks to a hoop for them to climb through, or attach glow sticks to cones for them to run around before placing their O or X onto the grid. They then need to run back to their team before the next player can go. The first team to get three in a row is the winner.
Light Drawing Using just a torch and a camera with a slow shutter, your young people can create some brilliant looking pictures! Light drawings are a simple but effective way of using lights to create shapes and pictures as seen in the examples on this page. For this activity you will need a camera which has a slow shutter setting. (If you have a smart phone, then there are apps available which have a slow shutter option) Give your young people a torch smaller torches tend to work best for this. Get them to stand in front of the camera and wave their torch around making shapes and letters. (ensure the torch is facing directly towards the camera at all times) Camera with a slow shutter setting Torches Age - Juniors Cost - Low Time - 10-15 mins Difficulty - 4/5 Set your slow shutter to around 6-8 seconds to begin with and see how that works. You can then always adjust the timing once you see how the pictures are coming out. Longer shutter speeds expose the camera to more light and shorter shutter speeds expose the camera to less of the light. Let your young people use their imagination and see what light drawings they can come up with.
Potted Sports Take some of your favourite potted sports, add some glow sticks and watch your room light up with activity! Potted sports are a series of challenges or games which your young people take part in, in small teams. Split your group into teams of 4 or 5 and start each group on a different station. After a few minutes, rotate the teams around and repeat until all the teams have visited each station. Equiptment detailed in each description. Some ideas for stations which you could run and how you can transform them using glow sticks, can be found below: 10 Pin Bowling Collect 10 water bottles, fill them up with a small amount of water to give them some weight. Then add a few glow sticks inside to light up each skittle. Age - Anchors / Juniors Cost - Low Time - 15-20 mins Difficulty - 1/5 Give the team two balls and get them to try and knock over as many skittles as they can using two balls (just like real 10 pin bowling). After two bowls, count the score and reset the skittles for the next person. Keep doing this, rotating through the team players and adding up the teams total score, until the time is up. Hoop & Chair For this challenge, place two chairs next to each other with a small gap between them. Place a throwing line a few meters away from the chair. Using a hoop, your young people need to throw / roll the hoop between the gap. Each time they get the hoop between the chairs they score a point. To light this game up, cellotape glowsticks around the hoop (both sides) and onto the chair legs, where they need to fit the hoop between.
Potted Sports Continued Hoopla If you have your own hoopla set, then this too can easily be used for glow in the dark potted sports. With your hoopla target, attach glow sticks to each target bar. Use two glow sticks connected together as a ring for your throwing hoops. You may want 4 or 5 throwing hoops. Allow each young person to try and throw the hoops onto the targets to score points. Keep a running total of the teams points, until the time is up. Obstacles Set up a small obstacle course which your young people need to complete. They could score points for every time they complete it during the given time. One example of a course could be: Start by collecting a play pit ball from a bucket, go through a hoop, through a tunnel, over a chair and place the ball into the bucket at the far end. To make this a glow in the dark obstacle course, attach glow sticks to the obstacles to light up the route. You could also attached glow sticks inside the buckets, which should help to light up the play pit ball inside. Make up your own You may have your own games which you would normally play for potted sports. Could you adapt these, using glow sticks, to fit with the glow in the dark themed evening? Just by attaching glow sticks to hoops, tunnels, chairs etc you can easily re-invent some of your classic potted sports ideas for your glow in the dark themed evening.