You finished teaching, but there are still 10 minutes before parents pick up their kids! What do you do?

Recently on a webinar with Ryan Frank, we talked about how sometimes we need to stretch the clock. Ryan shared practical time-fillers and activities to do at the drop of a hat and then challenged our community to share some of their own ideas.

Here are 45 awesome drop of the hat activities that you can easily add to your youth worker tool-belt.

Random Fun

• Beanboozled. Russian Roulette with candy. Maybe you will enjoy a peach-flavored jelly bean or maybe it will taste like barf. Yum.
• Kap It. Water bottle flipping game, but with objectives and boundaries!
• Heads or tails. A coin flipping game where kids guess by putting their hands on the head or tail. Guess right and stay in, guess wrong and you’re out!
• Head, shoulders, knees, cup! Follow the instructions and be the first person to grab the cup.
• Minute to win it! Sixty seconds to complete takes using random items from around the house. Here are 30 examples.
• Giant cup stack. Play the cup stack game but consider giant cups or buckets. Fastest stacker wins.
• Mannequin challenge. Have the children freeze in place while you play a worship song and capture the video.

Teaching or Review

• True/false chair. Think musical chairs but with true and false questions!
• Books of the Bible team challenge. Books are listed on craft sticks in baggies. one for OT one for NT. Challenge each team to put one set in order the fastest.
• Globe beach balls. Pass the ball around and wherever your thumb lands, pray for them.
• Tic tac toe review. Divide the class into 2 teams. Ask questions, team 1 tries to answer. If they are correct, they get the x, if wrong, the question goes to team 2. The first team to get 3 in a row wins.
• Family feud. Play with whatever you were talking about in large group.
• Review game or Bible trivia. Get bean bags that you toss and the kids race to pick up the bag and bring it back to you in order to answer the question.
• Share missionary stories. Update the kids on what the church is doing overseas.
• Bible drill.

Get Them Moving

• Freeze dance. Play music while the kids dance and when the music pauses all the kids must freeze in place. If they take too long then they have to do 10 jumping jacks.
• Chicken in the hen house. Partners will make shapes using their body. Last to complete are out!
• Impossible shot. Create a very challenging challenge for students to take turns trying.
• Ship Shore. Very similar to Simon says but directionally focused.
• Musical chairs.
• Four corners. Use a mega dice or colors to switch things up!
• Simon says / Jesus says. Follow the directions and the more the leader laughs the more fun this game will be for the kids.
• Red light/green light or wax museum. Don’t let the game leader see you moving! 
• Crows & cranes. The leader calls out either “Crows” or “Cranes.” This lets you know if you are the tagger or the person being tagged.
• Indoor snowball fight. Either buy fake snowballs or wrinkle up paper and throw them at each other. Consider adding a twist like capture the flag or protect the president.
• Hip hop to it! Have all the kids hop on one leg while playing Christian hip-hop. If they stop they are out, if they switch feet they are out. The winner is the last one hopping.

Get Them Quiet

• Silent ball. Leader counts down, “3, 2, 1, silent” and passes the ball to another person in the play area. Drop the ball, make a bad pass or make a sound and you’re out.
• Guess the time. Choose a time like 60 seconds and everyone tries to guess how long that is. Start the timer and kids hop up when they think 60 seconds is over. Time doesn’t stop till last kid stands. Note time when first kid stands just to get reactions.
• Sleeping lions. The room of kids go to sleep and the lions try to get them to wake up by telling jokes or being silly. Anyone who wakes up becomes the lion.
• Doggie, doggie, who stole your bone. Similar to heads up seven up but with an object that the kids go get.
• The Quiet Game. Teams have to sit absolutely still and quiet for a timed period. Anywhere from a minute to five minutes.

Community Building

• Icebreakers.
• Throw and Tell Balls.
• Team building activities.
• Who Am I? 
• Sit down if…
• Train-wreck.

Easy Classroom Games

• Pictionary.
• Hangman.
• Parachute games.
• I spy.
• Rock, paper, scissors and creative variations. Egg, chicken, eagle.
• Relay Games.
• Feather blowing competition. Kids try to blow one another’s feathers off a table using a straw.
• Juggling contest.
• Keep the balloon up.

Consider using lesson review words or phrases in these games.

What would you add to this list?

Corey Jones is the lead children’s pastor of Southern Hills Christian Church in Carrollton, Georgia. In his spare time, you can find him at a local coffee shop or fighting crime in Gotham. Corey wants to encourage and equip those around him and can be found on social media at @COREYRAYJONES.

This post was previously published by coreyrayjones.com.