I haven’t posted in a while; I got married last month! I’ll post some pictures soon (and I’m excited to tell you our love story).

I just wanted to pop in to share a few of the games that we have been playing in our middle school ministry this fall. They’re a little random, but a total blast. Feel free to use any of this material, including the graphics, which I created quickly in Canva.

The “Gobble Hobble” is the name I gave this game in a frenzy this last Sunday morning, when everything was going wrong and I needed to come up with a quick game. I remembered playing a version of this a few years ago and wanted to give it a quick funny name. Best part: It takes 3 minutes to prep.

Choose one person (we chose 4 — one from each grade) to go out into the hall and be blindfolded by a leader. Tell the group to, together, hid a “turkey.” The “turkey” can be anything, as long as you can decipher it with a blindfold on. In a pinch, we used a basketball. Invite the blindfolded person in, and lead them to the “turkey” only using “gobbles.” The same way you’d play hot-or-cold, the closer they get to the “turkey,” the more the crowd gobbles. First person to get to the “turkey” wins. It was complicated playing with four people, because no one knew if they were correct when we were gobbling. It worked out for us, though, and we were able to play two rounds (with instructions) in less than 7 minutes. Not a bad way to start off a Sunday morning!

Dice Wars is another great game — otherwise known as “1 to 100.” Since we are in a multi-purpose space, sometimes we find out last-minute that we have to switch to round tables for an event right after our youth group. That’s how I came up with this game. Here are a few games — that I, truthfully, copied and pasted from the internet. There are tons more games, too!

What you need: Each player needs a piece of paper to write on. You also need one die and one pen.

How to play: Everyone sits in a circle, either around a table or on the floor. One person starts out with the pen, and the person to their left starts out with the die.

Let’s say Paul has the pen, Tasha is to his left with the die, and Adam is sitting to Tasha’s left. When the game starts, Paul starts writing legible numbers, starting with 1 and going up to 100, as fast as he can on his paper, while Tasha starts rolling the die as fast as she can, trying to roll a six. As soon as she does roll a six, she gets to grab the pen from Paul and start writing numbers on her paper, while Adam grabs the die and tries to roll a six. As soon as he does, he grabs the pen, and the person to his left starts rolling. Play proceeds around the circle like this. The next time Paul gets the pen, he starts writing where he left off. The first person to write to 100 on their paper wins.

I love puns, and I was inspired by a Buzzfeed post to create this game. I used some from Buzzfeed, some from elsewhere.

Click here to access my link from Canva, and edit or download for yourself!

This was a game I used at the beginning of the school year, in order for students to make some new connections. It was a blast, and a traditional youth ministry favorite!

Click here to download and edit from Canva.