I wanted to share my favorite Christmas game with you all-a game that I made up last year for our student ministry!

The Main Idea: The Wheel of Naughty & Nice is a game that you can use with students to determine if they’ve been naughty or nice this year! If they spin “nice,” they get a candy cane. If they spin “naughty,” they have a chance to make up for their behavior and get an even better prize: a gift card. We used gift cards for Starbucks, Dairy Queen, Taco Bell, iTuness, & Steak N Shake.

Setting it up: Each “Nice” label has a candy cane underneath it, and each “Naughty” label has a challenge and then a gift card underneath. We use painter’s tape, FYI.

The “Naughty” Challenges:

• Sing “Jingle Bells” at the top of your lungs. Think: your best Buddy the Elf voice.
• Grab the jar of vaseline and cotton balls. Convince a friend to let you give them a Santa beard.
• With a mouthful of water, hum “Frosty the Snowman” through the entire chorus.
• QUICK! Name all 12 Reindeer
• QUICK! Name the two books of the Bible that the birth of Jesus is in.
• Sit on a person’s lap and tell them what you want for Christmas.
• Lead the room in your favorite Christmas carol
• Tell the room your top three Christmas movies
• Grab the red paint. Convince a friend to let you paint their nose like Rudolph!
• Have a few friends wrap you in toilet paper like a snowman.

Make sure that you collect all the supplies you need for the wheel and place them near your wheel for easy access! You can also do additional challenges. I have done challenges where students wrap each other like presents or decorate like Christmas trees, but that tends to take a lot of time–if an activity takes some time, and you have a large group that won’t pay attention for more than 60 seconds, have them move to the side, and keep spinning the wheel; then “check back in” with the challenge and give them their reward.

One last note: have a plan for if a student spins the wheel on an empty spot previously chosen by another. Either have an extra candy cane for them, or let them spin again.

Hope y’all enjoy! This was a hit with our students last year, and we are making another for this year.

update: here’s our picture for this year! The only issue was that we didn’t put it BETWEEN the prongs, so students kept spinning and choosing two. Don’t make our mistake! 😂