Tim Malone.id.au

Want an idea for a good, wholesome, messy youth activity?

Ok, here we go. This is what we did on Saturday night .

It started with a game of paint tag. We covered the kids’ (and our) backs with butcher’s paper to keep the clothes a bit cleaner, then ran around tagging people on their paper with our paint-covered hands. Once the game finished, the winner was the team with the least amount of tags, or the most amount of tags on other teams (we tagged in our team colours).

Next, we had to run and grab laminated puzzle pieces of our team’s colour out of a bucket of green rice-bubble slime, and put the pieces together then somehow work out what the puzzle was depicting (they were leaders’ faces scanned on the photocopier).

For something a bit cleaner, we then had to pass an orange from underneath our chin to the next team member in line, without using hands – only our chins! Then as soon as we made it through that, we raced onto the next activity, which involved throwing cheetos at the shaving-cream-coverered-face of our fellow team member. We got points for the amount of cheetos that stuck and stayed.

As we headed inside, we aimed to keep the carpet clean from dripping paint, slime, and shaving cream, and we headed to the kitchen for our next two challenges. Each team had a tray of icing sugar, and we had to get from it all the hidden jellybeans, using only our mouths. It was hard to see (and to breathe!) once some people decided to blow on the icing sugar to reveal the whereabouts of the jellybeans.

Next we had to lick nutella off cling-wrap. Both sides of the sheet of cling-wrap were covered in nutella, and whilst one team member cleaned off one side, another team member would clean off the other side. The team with the cleanest cling-wrap got the most points!

Once we all finished that set of games (which were all a race, by the way), we came back outside and lay down on the pavement, ready to play “Can You Hack It?”. In this game, increasingly gooey and unpleasant substances were poured on our faces to try to make us give up and get up and wipe our faces. Each team member that didn’t give up won the team more points. The first substance poured on our faces was good ol’ water, which we had almost no problems with. I, and I’m sure others did to, forgot to hold my nose, and thus the water made it up there. Next we had undiluted lime green cordial, and we found out that it can burn eyes (woops!). Then chocolate topping was smeard over our cheeks and foreheads, followed by some sort of slimey greey concoction. Beaten eggs were next, or oil for those allergic to eggs, and then baked beans. I liked the beans, as I hadn’t had dinner yet and was getting hungry…..

Next was cat food. Yeah. We had a choice between Jellymeat, or Chicken & Liver. I chose Chicken & Liver, and I was glad, because it smelt alot better than the Jellymeat. Finally, we finished with some off milk, and needless to say it didn’t smell that nice.

Amazingly, only three people pulled out.

The teams were very close, all less than about 50 points apart. The yellow team came second – we all live in a yellow submarine! (our team chant)

That was our first youth activity for this year. We’re running them for the high school/college aged people, and it’s led by us mostly university-aged people. In a couple of weeks time, we go to it again and have a giant cook-off. Most likely it’ll be complete with mess, again!