Back to School Kick Off Events for Preteen Ministry

Written by Rob Quinn

I love back to school time in preteen ministry!

Looking at it form the perspective of preteens, there are so many new things happening and changing for them at the beginning of the school year. We have a golden opportunity to kick-off the year with a bang.

When I think about how to capitalize on this opportunity, it always comes back to three key needs:

1) Preteens are relational; they want to hang out with friends and have fun.

2) Parents want to walk alongside their preteens helping them find out what their relationship with Jesus looks like, and we want to do that with them.

3) Finally, the leaders in your ministries want to build relationships with the preteens they will be interacting with over the next year.

Taking these needs into account, the best way to start the school year off right is to have an awesome back to school blowout / ministry kickoff event. We can have such a huge impact on their year if we start things off with some fun, and we can also meet those three needs all in one event.

Here are 4 awesome back to school events for your preteen ministry:

1. GEOCACHING SCRAMBLE

I discovered geocaching about 2-3 years ago with my own preteen daughter, and I have to say it is a blast. So when I was thinking about a great back to school event, this was one of the first things that came to mind. If you don’t know what geocaching is, it is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden in that location. Geocaching is an international game that anyone can participate in.

That’s the official, technical definition. Simply put: you look for cool stuff hidden all over the place. These are things that people have hidden for you to find. Geocaching is super fun and addictive, and here is how to pull off this type of back to school event.

This will be a longer event, and you will need to recruit parents or adult leaders that can drive. You will also need at least one member from each team to have a smart phone with a geocaching app installed, which I will discuss later. This is a great event for your preteens to invite friends to and for parents to get involved with.

Here is how it will work:

Divide your preteens in teams of 3-5 students per driver.

The object is to find as many geocaches as you can in the given amount of time. Once they find a cache they will need to get a group picture with the cache and text it to one of the event leaders who will log it. The team with the most caches found in the given amount of time wins. I recommend having a start time and return time, giving the teams between 2-4 hours of geocaching time.

For the game play:

Each team will need to come up with a team name before the game starts.

You will need 2-3 adults to be Geo-Judges. These judges will need to have a smart phone or device they can receive photo text messages on. These numbers will be given to each team to text the pictures of them with the caches they find. These pictures must have the team name attached to it or they will not count. The Geo-Judges will keep track of the teams and the caches they find and what time they were received. No caches received after the end time will be counted. So teams need to make sure they text the judges right when they find them. Once time ends the teams will return to home base for official presenting of the awards.

Each team will need to have smart phone with a good geocaching app. I personal use, https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/geocaching/id292242503?mt=8.

It is the best app out there but does cost $9.99. Feel free to search for others. I know there are many more out there to choose from. If your church cannot afford to purchase an app for each team, a $3.00 per student fee for the event should cover the cost of the app purchase.

I recommend making shoes and socks and no flip-flops a suggestion/rule. Sometimes they will have to hike into some wooded areas to find the caches.

With all the fun they will have, preteens will expect there to be some sort of awards event, and what better way is there to grow closer than to break bread together? I recommend having an awards dinner once all the teams return. This is a great opportunity to invite parents to come and have dinner together and see what the kids did. Also this gives you the opportunity to talk about the ministry to your parents and get them excited for what you have planned for the year.

For the awards I have always found that the more you have the better. Here are some of my own ideas, but you can add as many as you want.  If there is a tie for any reason use the time the last cache was received as the tiebreaker.

• 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place
• Least number of caches
• 1^st cache received
• 1^st team to return to base
• The last team to return to base

2. MESSY GAME NIGHT

This event is pretty self-explanatory – a night of fun messy games. Preteens love getting wet and messy for no reason, so why not use this to your advantage. One of the best events is a slime themed game night. I have students that are in high school now that come up to me and talk about this being the best event they ever did.

You need to begin by deciding on weather you are going to make your own slime or buy it. The best place to buy it is http://buckets-o-fun.com. The best recipe I have found is the one below; it works great in squirt guns, and it’s easy to find all the ingredients.

Slime Ingredients:

• 6 large packages of Jell-O
• 9 lbs. of flour
• 8 ounces baby shampoo
• 1 small bottle of green food coloring
• 1 1/2 gallons of water

Mix the Jell-O, half of the flour, and 1 gallon of water. Wisk until lumps are removed. Add remaining ingredients. Continue to add water until you reach your desired slime feeling. Add baby shampoo and food coloring. Stir until slime is green. Makes 3 gallons of slime.

The next step is to come up with the some games you want to play with your slime. Here are the games I have done with my preteens, but feel free to change or modify as you like. You will also want to invest in some slime blasters. These are available at bucket-o-fun also, but you can purchase them other places, too.

Slime Bombs

Supplies

• 2 pool noodles
• Slime blasters
• Buckets of slime and sponges
• Two large empty buckets

Mark off two lines about two feet apart from each other. Teams of two will play against each other until only two teams are left for a final battle. One preteen from each team will stand at the line with the pool noodle. The other team member will stand behind them with the bucket of slime and sponges. On go the teams will try and toss a slimy sponge into the large empty bucket on the other side. The noodle waving preteen needs to try and knock the slime sponge out of the sky before it lands in the bucket. The first team to get 3 sponges in the bucket wins the round.

Slime Slide Relay

Supplies

• Large roll of plastic sheeting
• Lots of slime
• Two pieces of pool noodle about 2 feet long

Divide your preteens into two teams and place half of each team on each end of the plastic sheeting. Cover the sheeting with slime, as much slippery stuff as you can. (Baby shampoo works well if you aren’t using slime.)

On go each team will have to relay the noodle back and forth as fast as they can. They have to slide down the sheeting, no running on the sheeting allowed, passing the noodle to the next waiting team member. Leaders feel free to use slime blasters to blast the players as much as you want as they are sliding. The team who gets everyone of their team to the opposite side first wins.

Slime it up

Supplies

• Dixie cups (lots of them)
• 2 equal size containers
• 2 smaller containers (optional)
• 2 16-20oz cups (optional)
• Lots of slime to fill those containers

Two teams of preteens will have to fill the same sized container with slime using only Dixie cups. On go, a member from each team will fill their cup and run to the container and dump their Dixie cup full of slime into it. Once they empty their cup, the next person grabs a cup, fills it with slime, and runs to dump it in the container while the first player goes to the end of the line. This continues until one team fills their container.

TWIST: Next to each large container place the smaller container. If a team decides to, they can fill the smaller container first. If they do this they will receive one larger cup or jar in exchange for all their Dixie cups. If they decide to use the larger cup it will be the only thing they can use to fill their bucket. No one on that team will be allowed to use the Dixie cups again. Team members will have to run the larger cup back to the first person in line before that person can go.

Leaders can squirt with slime blasters as the race goes on.

Some things to consider with this type of event:

1. Have kids wear clothes that can get stained – the slime can stain.
2. Have a wash up place for them to rinse off.
3. Have them bring a change of clothes.

3. DRIVE-IN MOVIE NIGHT

I recently took my daughter to her first drive in movie, and she thought it was the coolest thing ever. Since I am always looking for that next great event idea, this was a light bulb. This is one of those events that you can take as far over the top as you want or as minimal as you want.

Here are few ways to do this; if you are close to a real drive in theater check out if they do private movies. I have checked into a few and they are not as expensive as you might think. This does limit you to not having any fun activities before the movie or talking to parents before the show about the upcoming year, but it is really cool and gets families involved.

There are other ways to do this event also. You can rent an inflatable movie screen and projection system to use at your location. You can even just get a good projector and sound system and hang a sheet on an outside wall of your church. What ever you decide, know that is will be fun and pretty cool for your preteens.

What Now:

Once you have decided on how you are going to show the movie, you need to pick the movie. I am a firm believer in sticking with the movie rating system for church events. So since we are talking about preteens, keep it PG.

I also like to get the preteens having fun long before the movie starts, so plan some fun activities for them to do before the movie.

Here is a list of my favorites:

• 9 Square in the air
• Bean Bag Toss
• Anything with a ball, football, soccer ball, basketball (if there is a hoop around)

Make sure the preteens know they need to bring a camp chair or lawn chair to sit in for the movie. Having a popcorn and refreshment stand is always a winner during the movie. We have rented popcorn makers for these types of events, and you get that movie theater feel. The kids love ordering their own refreshments, too.

Make sure your leaders are interracting with the students. Have them take some time hanging out with them and getting to know them.

I always like to give out some special prizes to students who brought friends along with something for their friend. So have some stuff ready for this so those kids that may have never been to a church before feel welcomed.

4. GAME HOPPER

This is an awesome event filled with fun and strategically puts your leaders and students together to get to know each other. I know we all have seen Minute to Win It. This event takes those games and a get to know you scavenger hunt and smashes them together.

You will need to break your preteens in groups of equal number based on the number of games you have set up. Example: If you have 40 preteens and 5 games set up, your groups will be 8 preteens per group/game. My suggestion is to try and keep the number per group to no more than 8-10. More than this can bog down a game, and preteens will start to get restless.

The groups will rotate from game to game until they have completed each game. Then once everyone has had a chance to play each game, there will be time for students to go to their favorite game and try it again.

Each of your leaders will need to be stationed at a game table. They will be in charge of that game and keeping it running for the duration of the event. You can find so many different minute-to-win it games, so feel free to add or change from this list of my favorites. You may need to add games depending on the number of leaders and students you have.

• Cookie Face
• Stack it Up
• Suck it Up
• Stack Attack
• Scoop it Up
• Movin-on Up
• Nut Stacker
• Hang Nails
• Mouth to Mouth
• This Blows

There are numerous different web sites that give you the lists of supplies and directions on how to play these games. Here is a website with a PDF that has all of these games as well as others to choose from. Have fun choosing and playing what ever games you like. http://www.cbctoday.com/minutetowinit.pdf

Playing these games is only half of the event. For the other half, each preteen and leader will be given a list of questions to ask each other. Once they have all played and gotten the answers to the questions, gather everyone for one final large group question and answer game.

During the final Q and A, questions will be asked about leaders and students, and the first person to run up and answer correctly will win a prize.

Below are some questions to use for the leaders, preteens, and the Q and A.

Questions for preteens to ask:

1. What is your name?
2. What do you do for a living?
3. Do you have a smart phone/device?
4. What is your favorite app?
5. How old are you?
6. Are you married, if so for how long?
7. How many kids do you have?
8. What is your favorite super hero movie?
9. What is your favorite music?
10. What is your favorite sports team?

Questions for leaders to ask:

1. What is your name?
2. What grade are you in?
3. Where do you go to school?
4. What is your favorite super hero and why?
5. Do you have a favorite app?
6. How many siblings do you have?
7. What is you favorite song right now?
8. Do you play sports, and which one is your favorite?
9. What is your favorite sports team?
10. What is one thing about the Bible you don’t understand?

Q and A Game Questions:

1. Who is the oldest leader?
2. Who is the youngest leader?
3. What is (give a leader’s name) favorite app?
4. How many children does (give a leader’s name) have?
5. What is (give a leader’s name) favorite super hero?
6. How long has (give a leader’s name) been married?
7. What is (give a leader’s name) favorite sports team?
8. What does (give a leader’s name) do for a living?
9. Where does (give a student’s name) go to school?
10. What sports does (give a student’s name) play?
11. What grade is (give a student’s name) in?
12. What is (give a student’s name) favorite song?
13. What is (give a student’s name) favorite super hero?
14. Final Question: Who is ready to make this year the greatest year ever in (Name of Ministry)?

I am a big believer in getting parents involved and communicating with them. With the Geocaching event I showed you how to build in a parent communication component into the event. But for all of these other events you can do the same. One of the easiest ways is to schedule pick up time for preteens 30 minutes before the actual event is over. Let the parents know that there will be a parent kick off meeting during this time. Take this time to go over the ministry vision, exciting things in store for the year, and anything else you feel your parents need to know. It also gives your parents a great opportunity to see their preteens interacting with the leaders in your ministry.

Let me leave you with this final thought. The most important thing I can suggest about a back to school/ kick off event is to make it work for your church and your ministry. If you want to add a food component then do so; preteens love to eat. If outreach is a focus then push for your kids to bring friends. Preteens love hanging out and having fun. Take some time and kick off their school year right in a safe fun environment surrounded by loving leaders and friends.

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Rob Quinn serves as the Preteen Ministry Coordinator at Community Bible Church in Brighton, MI. He has been involved with preteen ministry for almost 8 years now. Rob is married to an amazing woman Jodi, who just so happens to be the Children’s Ministry Director at his church. They have one beautiful daughter Sydni, and an 8-pound attack dog named Lilly.