Angry Birds Party

It's summer time, which means it time to take advantage of good weather and go outside. To celebrate the end of the school year our on-campus ministry had an out of school bash where we had free food provided for the kids. The real draw for the event was in the activity, a real life Angry Birds game.

First off, let me tell you that the kids had a blast playing this, and with minimal effort you can recreate it too. Just follow these simple instructions.

1.) Go to your local Wal-Mart(s) and you will find the summer fun and toys section already set up. On one of the endcaps you should find these giant inflated rubber balls that go for just under $3 a piece. I would suggest picking up four of them, and get them in green if at all possible. While you are at the store you will want to pick up as many large cardboard boxes that they have to spare (going early in the morning or late at night are prime times to catch boxes that are about to be tossed). Also, if you don't have any black and white acrylic paint at your church you should pick up some.

2.) Drive back to your home/office/whatever and start painting. At first I was worried how these would turn out because I have no art skills, but when I realized it's all basic shapes and lines it ended up being a lot of fun. I would suggest making all the appropriate shapes in black on your piggies and after they have dried fill in the eyes with white, and if you plan on making a pig with a helmet mix the white and black together to get grey. While you still have the paint out you will want to pick out two cardboard boxes and paint "T.N.T." on the side.

3.) Now its settup time. The key is to make a structure in such a way that the pigs won't be blown over by a gust of air, but can still be knocked down. By keeping the tops of some of the boxes open we were able to make nice settings for our sneaky swines. Here is how we set ours up:

4.) Now you are ready for game play. What we did was divide teams based on gender and class, but you can do whatever works for you as long as you keep the teams small (this way everyone gets a chance to participate). As each team gets ready to take the mound give them one of those three person water balloon slingshots and ten tennis balls (sorry, I didn't tell you to pick those up at Wal-Mart, but most likely your youth ministry already has these). Put the playing team approximately 50 feet away from the structure they will be firing at at then let birds fly (Not in that way! This is a church function after all.)

We used the following point system to tally scores, but feel free to make up your own:

King Pig: 1,000 points

Helmet Pig: 750 points

Regular Pig: 500 points (each)

T.N.T. Box: 250 points (each)

Regular Box: 100 points (each)

After everyone has had their shot add up the scores and see who won. The kids will have a great time doing this, but the excitement will be even better if there is a prize to be awarded, for us it was an extra load of water balloons for the fight we had at the end of the BBQ. Over all it's an excellent event. One more thing you can do to make it even greater is to provide themed snacks. We had a particularly crafty relative make up these cool cupcakes (These were done with fondant, but you could have it done with regular icing).

There are a couple of things you may want to think about as far as running a timely game is concerned. Teams will over shoot their target and they will have to be replaced, so have other teams designated as offical ball shaggers for particular rounds. Also some kids may get bored waiting for their turn so if you have lots of teams and  the means to do so you may want to think about setting up a second structure so two teams can participate at once.

Well thats all I got for you all. I hope you can use this event for your group. Feel free to use the event image at the top of the screen  for advertisement (there is a nice space for you to enter in a date and other info).