Youth Group Activities for St. Patrick's Day
Participating in a youth group gives children and teenagers the opportunity to share common interests and form lasting friendships with their peers. Games and activities allow members to show off their competitive spirit and experience the joys of being young. Youth group leaders can keep the experience entertaining by relating the groups' activities to upcoming holidays. To create activities for St. Patrick's Day, youth group leaders can add an Irish twist to traditional group games. Does this Spark an idea?
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Pot of Gold Treasure Hunt
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Arrange for the youth group to partake in a St. Patrick's Day-themed treasure hunt. Divide the group into three teams. Choose a green team, a white team and an orange team to represent the colors of the Irish flag. Provide each team with their first clue and instruct them to follow the clue to the location it suggests; inform them that there they will find another set of color-coded clues. Instruct the teams to pick up the clue that matches their color and continue in this manner until they reach the final destination. Make sure that each team's final clue leads them to the same final location. The first team to reach the final location should find the prize: a pot full of chocolate gold coins.
Capture the Leprechauns
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Send several of the youth group leaders, dressed as leprechauns, to hide from the youth group members in a forested area of a nearby park or school playground. Divide the youth group into teams and instruct them to find and capture as many of the leprechauns as they can in an hour. Explain to the youth group members that the leprechauns are sneaky and may be hiding in trees, underneath leaves, or in bushes. Celebrate the captures with an Irish-themed picnic of soda bread, Dubliner cheese, and apple juice dyed with green food coloring.
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Bobbing for Potatoes
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For an Irish twist on the classic party game "bobbing for apples," have the youth group play bob for Ireland's staple crop, the potato. Fill large plastic tubs with water and dye the water green with food coloring. Empty bags of potatoes into the tubs. Choose small potatoes to ensure that they will float on the water's surface. Instruct the youth group members to bob for the potatoes with their hands held behind their backs. Tell them to bite into the potatoes to carry them out of the tub with their mouths. The person who pulls out the most potatoes in a 60-second time limit wins the game.
Shamrock Cookies
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If the youth group's facilities provide access to a kitchen, create shamrock cookies with the youth group as part of a St. Patrick's Day celebration. Purchase shamrock-shaped cookie cutters from a kitchen supply store, and provide the youth with a simple sugar cookie recipe and the ingredients it calls for. Once the dough is made, instruct them to roll it into sheets with a rolling pin. Show them how to press down on the flattened dough with the cookie cutter to create shamrock shapes. Bake the shamrock cookies and decorate them with green frosting or green sprinkles.
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References
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