Each year a team of youth staff and volunteers gets together and plans out our youth calendar together. For Halloween, we had two amazing ideas for youth events: “i-Scream” and “Meme-O-Ween.” We decided, why not combine them?

We usually have a fall party for our middles on our campus, with a hayride, pumpkin chunking, pumpkin painting, Scary-oke, and other fall components. This year, we decided to dial it back and have a few really simple elements.

Overview of the event

At our events, we typically do stations. For a three- hour event, we do 30 minutes of “up-front” games, almost 2 hours of stations, and 45 minutes for worship, an outreach-focused message, and door prizes.

Here is an overview of our stations for this event:

Activity	Location
Ice Cream Bar	Brandt Lounge
Scary-oke	Confirmation Room
What do you Meme? Games	Balcony
Game Room	Game Room
Laser Tag	Outside

Meme-O-Ween Ideas

Up-front Meme Games:

• From DYM: “Church Meme Showdown” – we had students move from one side of the room to the other. To be perfectly honest, this game flopped and I scurried to the next game.
• “Name that meme” – I created this game – students would move from one side to another to decide which name matched the meme. I threw out fistfuls of candy to the winning team! CANVA LINK
• From DYM: “Meme Me.” I called four people up on stage, and gave each of them a clipboard and paper and a pen (if you have whiteboards you could use those). I gave them 20 seconds to meme each image. The first person to 3 wins won!

COSTUME CONTEST:

Of course, we had a costume contest for the best meme-themed costume!

“What do you Meme?”

Having a “What do you Meme?” station was a very easy way to incorporate the meme. Note that you must get the FAMILY versions of “What do you Meme”, as the normal ones are safe for 14+ and can get very dirty.

MESSAGE: “It’s Fine”

I chose my favorite meme — the “It’s Fine” meme – to talk about how God gave us feelings, and it’s good to feel them.

i-Scream Bar

Of course, you have to start with the i-Scream Bar! We did a simple bar with vanilla, chocolate, and cookie dough bases. My favorite volunteer shopper did our shopping for toppings, and came up with:

• chocolate sauce
• caramel sauce
• strawberry sauce
• whipped cream
• chocolate chips
• butterscotch chips
• heath chips
• reeses peanut butter chips
• mini marshmallows
• andes chips

Other Fun Fall Party Ideas

• Scary-oke: Purchase a subscription with Karafun, hook up to a TV, turn on the parental control settings, and allow students to pick songs and sing them!
• Laser Tag: We rented an inflatable corn maze from our local inflatables company, and played laser tag inside of it with laser tag blasters we had on-hand.
• Pumpkin Painting: In the past we’ve done pumpkin-painting as a more creative activity. The only downfall: It takes time to dry.
• Hayride: In the past we’ve rented a Uhaul truck and open trailer, placed hay on it, and did our own “hay ride” on campus. This year we took a break and some of our kids were really bummed!