Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Fun Games and Activities



In addition to classes, we played a bunch of games throughout camp to keep everyone occupied, especially as kids were arriving. Here are some favorites and some good ideas that we didn't try:

Aurors


This is the game "Ninja," but with wands. Everyone stands close together in a circle, then on the count of three they jump backwards and make an intense dueling pose. Then one person starts by making only one move to try to tap the person next to them with their wand. They can choose the person either to their right or left, and the person they aim for gets only one move to get out of the way, i.e. move their arm or lean back. But it must be one motion, then everyone freezes again, and the next person to the right goes on the offensive trying to tap one of their neighbors. If someone gets tapped with a wand, they're out (although you can play so that everyone had 2 lives, and if you get tapped once, put your arm behind your back; tapped twice you're out). The last person standing wins.
This game is pretty easy for kids to get the hang of, and a lot of them really enjoyed playing it whenever they had a little extra time between two classes. As a side note, keep your camera out if you're not playing because this game creates some of the best wand action poses ever!

Giants, Wizards, and House Elves


This is a pretty classic camp game that is also a favorite of the kids. Basically it is a combination of rock, paper, scissors and tag. Detailed rules here: http://www.wpi.edu/Images/CMS/SAO/Giants_Wizards_Elves.pdf
It's hard to keep track of who beats who at first, so it helps to have a ref who asks each team what they will do before they do it, and then can tell which team to chase the other after they pose. Another note: this game can take a while to finish, so when we ran out of time we ended by doing a final "winner takes all" round.

Scavenger Hunt 


We split up into two teams based on house, and each group got a list of little things to find around the yard that had been hidden before camp that day, mostly plastic spiders, bugs, and lizards. If they were having a lot of trouble finding things, we gave them hints.

CROBSP (Creatures, Objects, and Spells)

This is this website's: http://summercampprogramdirector.com/harry-potter-camp-ideas-part-3-the-extras/ take on the camp camp FFEACH, rules here: http://summercampprogramdirector.com/ffeach/  We never actually got around to this, although we wanted to.

Stump the Wizards

The kids got to ask the counselors trivia questions about Harry Potter to see if they could stump them.

Magical Creature Game

Harry Potter version of the Animal Game. Everyone picks a creature and a motion that matches. The person who starts says their creature and does their motion, then says the creature and does the motion of someone else, who then goes. You're out when you mess up. We didn't try this.

Bertie Bott's Challenges


This was two activities: first, daring kids got to wear a blindfold and try to guess the flavor of a random jellybean. Then we played this trivia game as a group:  http://www.mugglenet.com/triviachallenge/bertiebottsflavors.shtml I sat at the computer and kids called out ideas of possible jellybean flavors to type in. Another counselor kept track of which house got points, so it was a competition.

Discussion

One of the days we had a short discussion about some themes and stuff from the books as kids arrived, which was fun for some kids and less for others, but I think it was an important part of camp because we rarely talked about the books, we mostly just did stuff, so it was a chance to talk about the books themselves. Here are the questions we used (we didn't actually go through all of them): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_YYwKCxFE1vZnFXUmctSmJkcHM/edit?usp=sharing



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