So I may have mentioned that 1 saturday a month or so, we volunteer to do something fun with the 7th and 8th graders.
IT's been hard to get them to mesh as a team, because there is a grade division.
But tonight I think we succeeded.
I downloaded 6 minute to winit videos, and my wife and I planned the events and had others help
with running the booths, and we had a marathon TEAM based minute to win it.
The folks gelled and there were a lot of good team building things happening.
If you want my formula, here is how to host a successful youth minute to win it night.
goals:
-separate the 'cliques'.
-award sportsmanship
-have fun
-award team and individual achievement.
1. Pick your six (or however many) events from the minute 2 winit website (we chose events that were titled tastefully and didn't waste food or consumables like Toilet Paper because of our limitations here.
2. Download and watch the videos, make a list of the equipment you need
3. Ahead of time, gather your equipment for each event.
4. Label your events with numbers (1 - 6)
5. Place all needed items for event in a bag marked for the number of the event (separate out your game pieces by event (1-6)
6. Recruit 1 person to run each booth (1-6)
7. The day of the event, setup is easy, drop the numbered bag off at the station it's for, explain to each leader the rules, and the setup, have them do the setup. Give them total control over the rules, let them be the booth boss.
8. Play the instructional videos for the kids.
9. Divide into teams (this method works well)
- as the kids come in have them write their first and last name on a slip of paper
- choose 6 kids to pull out an even amount of names (thus the teams are randomly assigned)
other methods are easy for the kids to cheat with... if they each pull out a number they can swap.
10. Team 1 starts as booth 1, and 2 and 2, and so on
11. Timing: EACH booth boss has a watch with a second hand.. to time 1 minute.
If you have 5 kids per team, and 6 booths, a good amount of time is 7 minutes. We budgetted too much time, we did 15 minutes because we assume 8 kids and 1 minute setup, but what ends up happening is the kids help with the setup as the play happens... so you spend almost ZERO time on setup
ROTATE teams to the next booth after 7 minutes.
12 Scoring: EACH team has a score card. The booth boss gives 1 point for each person on the team who successfully passes the test. If they have succeeded once, they don't get another stamp. This encourages EVERYONE to play and also awards individual achievement without causing one to shine more than any other. (otherwise the kids will elect the BEST to keep doing it for unlimited points). IF they run out of time they can redo for fun only.
SPORTSMANSHIP: - the timekeeper who is roving from booth to booth will put an S on the card if they get a sportsmanship point.
13 AWARDS: - we had a silly trophy and some candy to give out, because we hope to do it again. The trophy was little too 'girly' so the boys didn't care, but the girls sure did. Since when did GIRLS care more about trophies? Since the trophy was a plush toy FISH.
So that's how we did it. It was a HUGE success. The kids had a lot of fun, really went outside their social boundaries... which was our goal. WE saw some incredibly good sportsmanship, and it was the first time we didn't have some odd conflict happening in a corner somewhere.
But now, it's rest time, we're tired, it took a lot of creativity and work to pull it off, but we do it because we love our kids and this is part of living here. They don't have malls to go to, they don't have movie theatres, or whatever else kids do. But they do have these special saturdays where they never know what is going to happen... but they know it's always fun.
