Crowd Breakers and Mixers
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Youth Specialties
For over thirty years, Youth Specialties has worked alongside Christian youth workers of just about every denomination and youth-serving organization. We're here to help you, whether you're brand new to youth ministry or a veteran, whether you're a volunteer or a career youth pastor. Each year we serve more than 100,000 youth workers worldwide through our training seminars and conventions, resources, and on the Internet.
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Crowd Breakers and Mixers - Youth Specialties
GAGS AND SKITS
These loosen up an audience vicariously, for they require the active participation of only a few kids at most—up front, or onstage. These gags and skits generally involve a short set-up and a humorous pay-off—often at the expense of an unwitting but good-natured victim.
(For a vast collection of skits, many of which can be adapted for use as crowd breakers, see Drama, Skits, & Sketches and Drama, Skits, & Sketches 2 in the Ideas Library.)
BUCKET TRICK
Before your kids arrive, half fill a bucket with confetti or rice. Carefully place a ladle filled with water on top of the rice, making sure that no water gets spilled and that the ladle remains dry on the underside. Cover the top of the bucket to hide its contents. After everyone arrives and is gathered around (not too close), announce that you have acquired water from the fountain of youth. Carefully remove the ladle without spilling the water or revealing the contents of the bucket. Then pour the water from the ladle into a glass and have a volunteer (an accomplice) drink it. After a brief pause, the volunteer should start acting like a toddler. Then he or she should grab the bucket and throw its contents on the group. Surprise! It’s just rice, not water.
BASKETBALL AWARDS
The following awards can be presented to members of the school or church basketball team at a fifth quarter
social event, or youth meeting. The trophies can be mounted on wooden bases and the plaques on 6x12-inch pieces of plywood. All should be sanded, varnished, and made to look as much like the real thing as possible. Names can be done with a plastic label-making device.
Player with the greatest offense. Bottle of mouthwash on a base.
Player who smiles the most. Tube of toothpaste on a plaque.
Player with the most fouls. A chicken (dead or alive) or free dinner at Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Most energetic player. Vitamin pill on a base.
Best substitute player: Book to read while sitting on the bench.
Toughest player. Bottle of Brut aftershave on a base.
Most injured player. First-aid kit on a base.
Player with most baskets. Easter basket full of candy eggs.
Best dribbler. Baby bib on a plaque.
Best jumper. Frog (real or phony) on a base.
Best dutch
player. Old clutch or brake pedal on a base.
You can add more to this list with a little creativity. Serious trophies or awards to outstanding players can also be added to end on a positive note.
Ron Allchin
BUZZ, BUZZ, LITTLE BEE
Make everyone a little uneasy by announcing that you are going to give a lesson on the birds and the bees. Point out that due to a lack of time you will cover only the bees part now.
Next, select a player from the group who’s a good sport and who will play along enthusiastically. Seat the player in a chair in front of the group. The player is to pretend that the room is a garden, that the stage area is the beehive, and that he is the queen bee, the ruler of the hive. Explain that you are the worker bee. Your job is to gather pollen from the garden and bring it back to the hive. Each time you return to the beehive with your load of pollen, you will say (in bee language), Whompf!
(Explain that you will gather a larger load of pollen each time you go out, making it more difficult for you to speak each time you return.) Then the queen bee must reply, Buzz, buzz, little bee. Give it all to me.
Practice this scenario a few times with the player and have the group applaud.
When you go out into the garden, flap your arms and buzz a lot to make it fun to watch. Make sure that on each flight you find a spot that is out of sight of the player, behind a screen, for example. On your third or final flight, fill your mouth with water while you are out of sight, return to the queen bee, and say Whompf!
After the queen bee replies, spit your water all over him.
You may or may not want the audience to see that you have filled your mouth with water on your final flight. Either way will add to the fun. Or fool the audience and ensure the stunt’s success by having the volunteer be an accomplice who pretends to be shocked or mad in the end.
DOOR SUR-PRIZES
Give away a door prize at every party. Here are some suggestions:
The Perfect Gift to Take Care of All Your Hang-Ups. Two clothes hangers. Also keeps your room clean.
Fourteen-Carrot Gold Ring. Fourteen carrots with greens secured together in a giant ring, sprayed with gold paint. Hang around winner’s neck.
California Wet Suit. One pair of baby’s plastic pants. A vacation must. Stops the water, but not the sun.
Tickets to a Free Dinner. Give two blank tickets. Dinner follows the floor show which begins at 7:30. Courtesy of the San Francisco (or any glamorous city) Gospel Mission.
Motorized Brick for Lazy Radicals. Attach wings, engine, and propeller from an inexpensive toy plane to a brick. Eliminates effort, personal involvement, and risk of incarceration. Just aim brick on a long, smooth surface and start the engine.
A Couple of Dates Lined Up for Two Guys. Two
attractive girls come out, hold up a long string threaded through two dates (fruit).
Free Chicken Dinner. One small plastic bag full of birdseed, a dinner to delight any chicken.
Automatic Egg Beater. Tell your students, We couldn’t afford the giant-sized maxi-stir or the medium-sized midi-stir, so we are giving you the inexpensive mini-stir. Pastor Jones, would you please say a few words appropriate for the occasion?
The pastor could respond with the following: When the time’s up, just pull my plug. Actually, Joe’s afraid I’ll get you all mixed up.
Vacuum Cleaner or Dishwasher. Introduce the surprise clean-up committee or K. P. crew to be run by the winner.
Dave Cassel
FORTUNE-TELLER
Select a trusted adult who is unfamiliar to your kids to help you with this activity. Announce that your adult guest has supernatural powers. He or she can tell strangers about their pasts and predict their futures. Act as if you are randomly choosing two or three kids and invite your guest to describe hits of humorous (but true) information about the subjects. Of course, you have secretly gathered this information ahead of time from parents and briefed your guest with it. After you have had some fun with this, clue the audience in. You can use this activity along with a session on Scripture’s perspective on fortunetelling.
GURU, THE MIND READER
This stunt is good for small casual meetings or at socials. All that is needed is a telephone. You announce to the group that there is a guru
in town, whom you can call anytime and ask to name any card (from a regular deck of cards) that you have chosen ahead of time. He will always name the right card on the first guess. To prove this, have the group choose a card (eight of spades, for example). You then call the guru, who is actually someone clued in ahead of time, waiting for your call. When he answers, he immediately starts counting, Two, three, four, five, six
and when he reaches the right number or name (queen, king, ace) of the card, you say, Hello, may I speak to the guru, please’
The guru then names the suits (clubs, hearts, spades, diamonds). As soon as he names the correct one, you interrupt with Hello, guru, we have chosen a card we would like you to guess.
Put one of the kids on the line to listen as he names the card, much to the amazement of all. David Parke
LETTER FROM GRANDMA
On page 16 is a fun letter that can be read for laughs. Read it slowly and pause after each period. If you use it at a camp, you can read it during mail call. Just introduce it by explaining, There wasn’t a name on the envelope, and we couldn’t figure out who this letter was to. Maybe you will recognize it if we read it. It’s from your grandma…
Evgene Gross
MOUTHWASH SALES REPS
This is a good stunt for a rally-type youth meeting when it would be possible to send two or three kids out on the street for a period of 20 to 30 minutes at the start of the meeting and then return with results. The idea is to test their sales ability with a ridiculous product, namely reclaimed mouthwash. Two kids are given the props described in the sales pitch below and are given a certain length of time to go door-to-door to try to sell the product. An assistant goes with each of them to keep score on how well they do. The participants are given a copy of the sales pitch on page 17 (read it to your audience before the kids leave), and each kid must read it to the people who answer the door and go through all the motions described. (Use colored water for mouthwash and a radio speaker as a breath meter.)
The scoring is as follows: If the customer buys the mouthwash, the sales rep gets 2000 points. If the customer tries the mouthwash, the sales rep gets 1000 points. If the sales rep can get all the way through the whole pitch without laughing or getting the door slammed in his face, he gets 500 points. At the end of the time limit, the sales reps return to the meeting and the one with the highest score is the winner.
PARK BENCH
Send three or four people, either boys or girls, out of the room. While they are out, have a boy and girl sit side-by-side on a park bench (or two chairs). Bring in one of the people waiting outside the room. Tell her that the people on the park bench like each other a lot, have just been out on a date, and continue to give a big build-up. Then ask her to arrange the two people in a position to make them look more romantic (such as holding hands or embracing). The fun begins when, after doing this, she must take the place of the girl, doing what she suggested. Bring in the next person and repeat the process. Continue until you feel it is time to stop. Lynne Surft
PASTOR SPLICE
First obtain cassette recordings of several of your pastor’s sermons. Then use two tape recorders (or a dual
Dear Sonny,
Since I have time because I am not busy, I thought I would write you a few lines and let you know the up-to-date news. We are all as well as can be expected, for the condition we are in. We ain’t sick, we Just don’t feel good. I am feeling fine; Aunt Martha is dead. I hope this letter finds you the same. I suppose you will want to hear about us moving from Illinois to Hollywood. We never started until we left. It didn’t take us any longer than from the time we started until the time we arrived. The trip was the best part of all. If you ever come out here, don’t miss that.
They didn’t expect to see us until we arrived, and most of the people we were acquainted with, we knew, and the people we didn’t know seemed like strangers. We still live at the same place we moved to last, which is beside our nearest neighbors across the road from the other side. Randy says he thinks we will stay here until we move or go somewhere else.
We are very busy farming. Eggs are a good price; that’s the reason they are so high. Some of the ground here is so poor you can’t raise an umbrella on it, but we have a fine crop of potatoes. Some of them are the size of a hickory nut, some the size of