Minute (or so) To Win It

This past Wednesday for our combined mutual activity we had an awesome game; my mom had asked for details but I thought I'd share with everyone in case there were others who might be interested. The entire premise of the activity was Minute to Win It - a show on NBC which is actually kind of fun to watch (if you can stand the annoying host).

The game show has a ton of different, silly tasks that people have to do in under 60 seconds. Think 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire", but instead of answering who was the 14th U.S. Ambassador to Uganda, you have to drop a quarter from 4 feet up, into a fish bowl full of water, and get it to land in the shot glass at the bottom of the fish bowl (sounds easier than it is - the water makes the quarter shoot off to the side). As soon as I heard about it I thought "I can picture these types of games happening at one of our family reunions."

Since we wanted to make the activity fun for all of the kids, not just one at a time, we tweaked the game a fair amount. To start with, we chose six games which were sometimes exactly like the game show versions, others were modified considerably. We broke the kids into five different teams of four kids each; we then had them race each other rather than the clock. The first team to finish got 5 points, the second got 4 points, etc. and any team that finished the task in under 60 seconds got a bonus point - but that actually only happened a couple of times.

One thing that actually made it a lot of fun was that I was able to get audio of the game show countdown timer, the game show music, and an airhorn to start the timer and notify the players when the first 60 seconds was up and their chance at a bonus point was over. If anyone ends up playing this game, I can send you the audio files to add a nice touch to the event - though you'll want some very loud speakers to play the sounds/music over since the games get the kids pretty riled up. Of course you'll want a handful of adults playing referee and a handful of adults getting whatever pictures/video they can - it's hilarious to watch.

As for the games:

"Hanky Panky" - Each team had two boxes of kleenexes and teams sub-divided into pairs; one of the teammates from each pair was required to hold the box down on a table while their partner raced to pull every kleenex out of the box using only one of their hands and only pulling one out at a time. The two players who had been holding the boxes down then had to pick up all of the kleenexes and get them to the garbage - we finally made cleaning up a game.

"Egg Roll" - Two players from each team participated at a time; we started everyone off at the half-court line with a hard-boiled egg and an empty pizza box for each person. Each player had to use the air from waving the pizza box to roll the egg across the court and onto a piece of paper we'd taped down at the baseline - both teammates had to get the egg on the piece of paper before they were done. At no point could they touch the egg with anything but the air from waving the pizza box. Once the first round was done, the other pair of teammates played in round two so that everyone could participate.

"This Blows" - Each team was given 19 plastic cups (because that's how many fit across the tables we used), several balloons, and two sets of chopsticks. Two of the teammates had to first take the stack of cups and line them up, face down, in the middle of their table; the other two teammates then had to use the air from the balloons to blow the cups off the table - nothing could touch the cups except the air coming out of the balloons. The original pair of teammates (who did not have the balloons) then had to use only the chopsticks to pick the cups off the ground and put them back on the table.

"On the Nose" - Each team was given 20 cotton balls, working together they had to transfer the cotton balls from a stack at one end of a table into a cup at the other end of the table. The cotton balls could only be touched with the player's nose, with vaseline acting to lift the cotton ball. Ideally the player has to shake the cotton ball off (too little vaseline and the ball won't stick; too much and it won't come off), but most players were ignoring rules at this point and just wiped their nose onto the edge of the cup - not nearly as funny to watch.

"Johnny Applestack" - Each team was given 4 red, ripe apples and they had to create a vertical stack using all four apples. The apple tower had to then remain standing for at least 3 seconds. Nothing but the apples could be used to make the tower.

"Face the Cookie" - This was our grand finale; everybody was given an oreo which they had to place on their forehead, then without touching the cookie with anything except their face, they had to wriggle the cookie down into their mouth. If the cookie fell they had to pick it up and start again.

We really had a great time with this game and I highly recommend it for mutual activities or family reunions. Check out the show's website for a complete list of all of the different games, just watching the "blueprints" on how the challenges are performed is a load of fun in and of themselves.

Labels: Brett, funny, religion

posted by Brett at 8:45 PM