Promotional downloads
Not summer camp – meeting plan
This is an evening plan to cheer up a cold winter evening by using some imagination to pretend young people are on a summer camp. It doubles as a promotional event for any of the summer camps, especially Purbeck Venture, if you’d be so kind.
Preparation
Invite young people to come in summer attire:
- Shorts
- t-shirts
- Flip-flops
- Sunglasses
- Caps / sunhats
Buy some ice lollies.
Turn the heating up!
Make sure it is nice and toasty in the hall where you meet.
Opener
Play beach volleyball
Set up a long net across the room. Try to stick to the real rules as much as possible, but flip-flops makes this as hard as playing on sand.
If in a room with breakable windows, make sure you’re using a sponge football.
If you can sustain this for long enough for everyone to have a few serves and the first team to 9 points, then you’ll need some drinks ready.
Summer-up your drinks
Have ice cubes, straws, slices of fruit even in squash.
Watersports
Stay in teams – these games are relay races. To keep the teams gathered on the “shore” while they are waiting, have a picnic rug for each team to sit on.
If playing on a wooden or lino floor, then this works with towels. If on carpet, use a shiny-bottomed picnic rug.
Kayaking / swimming
Each player in turn sits on the towel and bum-shuffles forwards down the length of the room – extra points can be awarded for the Kayak arm movements. When they reach the end, they pick up the towel, put it on their shoulders and mime swimming back – if adventurous, some other shuffle lying on their tummy, or just run back waving arms.
Continue until all players have done one lap.
Wake-boarding
This game is still in teams, but players work in pairs. One player kneels on the towel, the “board”, whilst the other one pulls them along as a speedboat. This one is particularly popular on a skiddy floor, but take care that the “boarder” kneels and/or holds on so as not to fall backwards. Don’t try it standing up.
Field games
Adapt a number of classic Crusader games for indoors.
- If the net is still up, play Halo or Badminton
- Ringer – you’ll need a couple of hacker sticks and a quoit.
- Rounders – adapt this with newspaper bats and balls. Easily made with a bit of patience, plenty of newspaper and sellotape.
- Podex – if you’ve got the space, you can use the same equipment as Rounders.
- Garden Jenga
Relaxing on the beach
Run a competition to build the best sandcastle scene
You’ll need a combination of the following
- Tray with play sand
- Small cups / egg cups as buckets
- Cocktail spoons as spades
- Cocktail sticks / lollie sticks / straws / address labels to make flags
- Stones / shells
- Cocktail umbrellas
Take photos – you could have a background “sea shore” picture to set the scene up for the photo.
Whilst they’re doing that, they could be making knotted hanky sun hats.
Wish you were here!
Have some postcards to send home or to friends, describing their holiday experience. This doubles as promotion for your normal youthgroup programme.
Ice lollies / choc ices
Finish by handing these out and whilst they are eating, you can do the real summer camp pitch, showing a promo video and getting some young people who have been on camp to describe what they liked about a previous year’s holiday. Have plenty of flyers, post-cards and booking forms ready.
If time…
Introduce some elements of a summer holiday evening programme
- Hotdogs / burgers
- Hot chocolate and marshmallows
- Cabaret sketches / songs
- Camp fire songs
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