Pack meeting active games for the whole family?

[83Eagle 11]

For our last pack meeting, I'd like to do a group game(s) that is active and involves the entire family (adults and kids) and gets everyone off their duff. Maybe 2 games/activities that would last about 15 min each.

 

Nothing jumping out at me from the big How-To book. Any suggestions?

[JoeBob 606]

I get a lot of ideas from here:

 

http://www.inquiry.net/outdoor/games/relay.htm

 

I like to divide teams to include a cross section: "One member of each rank, one parent, one leader, and one sibling. If you can't find a team, gather in the middle of the room, and leaders will put together the mis-matched."

[shortridge 184]

How large is your pack (+ parents & sibs)? Can you meet outdoors, or are you limited to a gym or church hall?

 

I've found http://www.ultimatecampresource.com/site/camp-activities/large-group-games.page-1.html to have some pretty good ideas, though some aren't right for Scouting or a mixed group. Amoeba Tag can be fun.

[83Eagle 11]

I guess those details would help...

 

I would expect about 60 people. 25 scouts, and 35 others.

 

We meet in a gym.

[AnnLaurelB 10]

Steal the Bacon. Active, classic, and hysterically funny.

[83Eagle 11]

Went through a bunch of the games listed. The problem is most of them are the same general theme in a different way, involving either a variation of tag or a lot of large-space running around. Great for evenly aged kids, but not great when you try to add in grandpa and 4-year old sister.

 

Thinking about it some more, I'm thinking of "minute to win it" stations. They're goofy and not terribly physically demanding. Plus you can easily modify some of them for a wide range of ages, such as requiring younger ages to do less of a particular activity--i.e., keeping one or two balloons in the air for a minute, rather than 3.

[kari_cardi 10]

Minute-to-Win-It games are great, but we did find that many of the parents did not want to participate. The pack activity that had EVERYONE involved? Was a mock snowball fight with new rolled socks that started with a sneak attack on the parents by the scouts. It was a blast!

[Scouting4Ever 11]

I got the idea of Sock Wars from this forum. We did it last month and it may go down as the highlight of the year. We had 4 big boxes and the Scouts brought boxes to make a fort on each team. We divided them up 1, 2, 1, 2. We had a round against parents, a round against the Boy Scouts that were there for the crossover, it was a blast! We have 30 Cub Scouts.

[83Eagle 11]

We did sock wars for a Christmas activity with new socks that families donated and we gave afterward to a shelter. It went well but it is still hard to get parents off their cans. I gave people a choice of helping with the forts or rolling socks but a handful still stayed planted on the bleachers.

 

This time I'm not pulling the bleachers out.....

[AnnLaurelB 10]

I made fake cannonballs for my son's "Pirate" birthday party. RECYCLE! We can throw those at each other. Great fun!

 

But the other idea the sock thing made me think of is you could do multi-balloon volleyball. Even grandpas in wheelchairs can do that!

 

(Blow up a lot of balloons, toss them in the middle of some sort of boundary (tape on floor, tables, etc...) and the two teams have to bat the balloons onto the other team's side.

 

After time is called, count the balloons on each side.

[83Eagle 11]

The minute to win it games were a big hit. We had 7 stations set up and when families arrived we assigned them to group 1-7, trying to keep the numbers equal. We ran a few rounds per station then rotated.

 

Not all the parents did all the games, as expected, but I was happy to see several parents try "magic carpet" (move on a towel across the floor without touching the floor). More popular ones included moving M&Ms from one cup to another using a straw, and "high roller" (stacking dice on a popsicle stick held between your teeth). Also did "don't blow the joker," "candelier," (build a paper plate and aluminum can pyramid) "go the distance" (roll pingpong balls down a tape measure into a cup), and "air balloon" (keep 2 balloons in the air at the same time).

 

It was a good prelude to our year end graduation, which involved sundaes and root beer floats. Games and ice cream, how can you go wrong? Like someone said, if you can plan a birthday party you can plan a pack meeting.