We wanted to gain the visibility within our community so we did the following:
1. Served hotdogs, chips, and a cookie each week.
2. Roped off an area of the yard using shepherds hooks and flag pennants. (this also served as boundary lines so that kids knew where they could/couldn't go)
3. Purchased large, inflatable games from Target to generate some excitement before the actual program started.
We purchased team buffs (think Survivor) for each kid. Kids reach into a large bag and pull out a buff without looking. This determined the team they were on that night. Each week we gathered the buffs and had to launder them bc they're on kids heads and bc our games were messy.
Using shower curtains as team "mats" kids could easily identify where to go and stand with their teams after they drew for their team buff. Draw a blue buff from the bag? Head to the blue mat. Coaches were told ahead of time which team they were in charge of and set their mats up about five minutes before we allowed kids to pull for buffs.
Weather has been an issue for us a couple of times already but we just improvised. Excited to see what the rest of our summer brings as we meet new kids in our community.
Our theme nights included:
- Food Fight Night
- Beach Bash Night
- Water Games Night
- Chocolate Night
- MESStival Night
- Amazing Race Night
- Spam Olympics Night
- Mt Dew Mania Night