You finished teaching, but there are still 10 minutes before parents pick up their kids! What do you do?
Recently on a webinar with Ryan Frank, we talked about how sometimes we need to stretch the clock. Ryan shared practical time-fillers and activities to do at the drop of a a hat and then challenged the kidmin community to share some of their own ideas on the I Love Kidmin group. Here are 45 awesome drop of the hat activities that you can easily add to your kidmin tool-belt.
Random Fun
Beanboozled. Russian Roulette with candy. Maybe you will enjoy a peach flavored jelly bean or maybe it will taste like barf. Yum.
Cap It. Water bottle flipping game but with objectives and boundaries!
Heads or tails. A coin flipping game where kids guess by putting their hands on the head or tail. Guess right and stay in, guess wrong and you’re out!
Head, shoulders, knees, cup! Follow the instructions and be the first person to grab the cup.
Minute to win it! Sixty seconds to complete takes using random items from around the house. Here are 30 examples.
Giant cup stack. Play the cup stack game but consider giant cups or buckets. Fastest stacker wins.
Mannequin challenge. Have the children freeze in place while you play a worship songs and capture the video.
Teaching or Review
True/false chair: Think musical chairs but with true and false questions!
Books of the Bible team challenge. Books are listed on craft sticks in baggies. one for OT one for NT. Challenge each team to put one set in order the fastest.
Globe beach balls. Pass the ball around and wherever your thumb lands, pray for them.
Tic tac toe review. Dividing class into 2 teams. Ask questions, team 1 tries to answer. If they are correct, they get the x, if wrong, the question goes to team 2. First team to get 3 in row wins.
Family feud. Play with whatever you were talking about in large group.
Review game or Bible trivia. Get bean bags that you toss and the kids race to pick up the bag and bring it back to you in order to answer the question.
Share missionary stories. Update the kids on what the church is doing oversees.
Bible drill
Get Them Moving
Freeze dance. Play music while the kids dance and when the music pauses all the kids must freeze in place. If they take too long then they have to do 10 jumping jacks.
Chicken in the hen house. Partners will make shapes using their body. Last to complete are out!
Impossible shot. Create a very challenging challenge for students to take turns trying.
Ship Shore. Very similar to simon says but directionally focused.
Musical chairs
Four corners. Use a mega dice or colors to switch things up!
Simon says / Jesus says. Follow the directions and the more the leader laughs the for fun this game will be for the kids.
Red light/green light or wax museum. Don’t let the game leader see you moving!
Crows & cranes. The leader calls out either “Crows” or “Cranes.” This let’s you know if you are the tagger or the person being tagged.
Indoor snowball fight. Either buy fake snowballs or wrinkle up paper and throw them at each other. Consider adding a twist like capture the flag or protect the president.
Hip hop to it! Have all the kids hop on one leg while playing Christian hip-hop if they stop they are out, if they switch feet they are out. Winner is last one hopping.
Get Them Quiet
Silent ball. Leader counts down, “3, 2, 1, silent” and passes the ball to another person in the play area. Drop the ball, make a bad pass, or make a sound and you’re out.
Guess the time – Choose a time like 60 seconds and everyone tries to guess how long that is. Start the timer and kids hope up when they think 60 seconds is over. Time doesn’t stop till last kid stands. Note time when first kid stands just to react
Sleeping lions. The room of kids go to sleep and the lions try to get them to wake up by telling jokes or being silly. Anyone who wakes up becomes the lion.
Doggie, doggie, who stole your bone. Similar to heads up seven up but with an object that the kids go get.
The Quiet Game. Teams have to sit absolutely still and quiet for a timed period. Anywhere from a minute to five minutes.
Community Building
Easy Classroom
Pictionary
Hangman
Parachute games
I spy
Rock, paper, scissors and creative variations. Egg, chicken, eagle.
Relay Games
Feather blowing competition: kids try to blow one another’s feathers off a table using a straw
Juggling contest
Keep the balloon up
Consider using lesson review words or phrases in these games.
What would you add to this list?
Comment below AND post to the original Facebook post by clicking HERE.
We added a new one that the kids love! Not sure what to call it, but if it’s around Christmastime you can call it something like cotton-headed-ninnymuggins or something like that. Good dab of vaseline on the tip of their nose and a cotton ball squished to it. Then they have to blow upward to try and get rid of the cotton ball. No hands and no shaking their heads. We have several kids from each team come up and the team whose members have ALL gotten theirs off wins. You can allow them to help their teammate or not. 😉