Game Materials
Newsprint, or two whiteboards and markers
Youth Create a wacky love letter, one word at a time.

Game Play
1. Tell the groups that they as a team will be writing the best love letter they know how.
2. Line each team up in a single file line and one at a time write one word of their letter on a large piece of paper you have taped up onto the wall in front of each group.
3. Start both teams out with the same line such as “Honey, I love you so much that…”
4. One at a time team members will go to the board and add a word to their team’s letter.
5. Tell them ahead of time that they will be disqualified if they write anything inappropriate. Make sure your leaders are watching this as well.
6. When one person is done writing one word he/she will go to the end of their line and the next person will write a word.
7. They cannot talk with one another or share ideas with one another.
8. Give them four minutes to complete the letter.
9. Pick on student from each team to read their letter out loud to the rest of the group and have a panel of leaders vote on the best letter.

Replay
You can do it again, this time writing a break-up letter. This time start the letter, Honey I know we’ve had good times but…

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Creative Holiday Ideas has over 300 pages of ideas to help you plan your next New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Halloween or Fall Festival, and Thanksgiving event. If you’ve ever wondered what you’re going to do for all these holidays and how you’re going to do it, this resource is for you.

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Game Materials
Chairs for youth arranged in a circle.

Game Objective
Can you get someone of the opposite sex to smile?

Game Play
1. This is a “lose when you smile” game.
2. Everyone sits in a circle and one person is “it” in the center.
3. The goal of the person in the center is to get someone of the opposite sex to smile.
4. He/ she does this by going up to a person of the opposite sex and saying in whatever manner desired to get a smile, “Honey, if you love me would you please, please, smile.”
5. The person chosen must then say, making eye contact, without a smile, “Honey, I love you, but I just can’t smile.”
6. If he/she smiles, then he/she becomes “it.”

Game Application
Conclude this activity by saying that we often place conditions on our love. “I will love you if…” “If you love me you will…” “I love you because..” True love is unconditional.

Cautions
You may want to set specific rules, such as “no body contact” to keep this from getting out of hand.

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Creative Holiday Ideas has over 300 pages of ideas to help you plan your next New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Halloween or Fall Festival, and Thanksgiving event. If you’ve ever wondered what you’re going to do for all these holidays and how you’re going to do it, this resource is for you.

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Game Materials
1. A cheap, rubber-tipped bow and arrow or dart gun for each team.
2. Heart shaped or red balloons
3. Straight pins
4. Slips of paper

Game Objective
Youth must pop balloons with cupid’s arrows and correctly piece together a love poem or scripture verse.

Game Preparation
1. Stick a straight pin carefully through the rubber tip so that the arrow or dart is “loaded.”
2. Create a corny love poem such as: “Roses are red, violets are blue; if you kiss me, you’ll come down with the flu.”
3. Write each word of the poem on a slip of paper and place it in a balloon.
4. Inflate the balloons and tape them to a wall. Have a different color or balloon designation for each team. Red, White, Pink, pastels are nice.
5. Mark a tape line on the floor at least 10 feet from the targets and line up each team single file behind the tape.
6. Have a responsible assistant handle the “ammo.” To avoid dangerous crossfire, ammo should only be collected once all teams have shot all thier arrows.

Game Play
1. Each person gets one shot at the balloons, then moves to the back of the line.
2. When a balloon pops and after all shooting ceases, retrieve the word-clue from any balloon that popped and give it to the team of that color (It is possible that another team may pop the balloon for you if their aim is off)
3. The first team to figure out the poem wins!

Variation
Instead of love poems, use Bible Verses related to love or relationships.

Holiday Collection

Creative Holiday Ideas has over 300 pages of ideas to help you plan your next New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Halloween or Fall Festival, and Thanksgiving event. If you’ve ever wondered what you’re going to do for all these holidays and how you’re going to do it, this resource is for you.

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Game Materials
Valentine’s Day candy conversation hearts (BE MINE, COOL KID, LOVER BOY, KISS ME, MY GAL, etc.)

Game Objective
Play a game of charades using candy conversation hearts as the messages.

Game Preparation
1. For this game to be effective, there must be quite a number of different conversation hearts to choose from.
2. Put all the candy in a bowl.

Game Play
1. One person from a group picks out one of the candies from the bowl and, using the regular rules for Charades, tries to pantomime the message.
2. The person who correctly guesses the saying gets to eat that piece of candy.
3. It’s fun to watch the participants try to do phrases like LOVER BOY, KISS ME, and all the other crazy sayings found on the candy.

Game Variation
Use Valentine Cards instead of Valentine candy.

Game Variation
Use different emotions for the items to be pantomimed. The person who guesses the emotion gets a point. Emotions that can be used are: anger, fear, happy, nervous, bored, bitter, overwhlemed, depressed, at peace, embarassed, loved, proud, detached, shocked, hate, and finally, love

Game Variation
In larger groups you might give each person one of the above emotions. There should be at least two people that have each emotion. The objective will be to display the emotion until you find the other members of your group. When you think you have your partners/group have a seat. Continue until all groups are seated. Then have each group strike a pose of their emotion ending finally with that of love. What does love look like? What actions show love? How did you find your group? How do we find love?

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Creative Holiday Ideas has over 300 pages of ideas to help you plan your next New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Halloween or Fall Festival, and Thanksgiving event. If you’ve ever wondered what you’re going to do for all these holidays and how you’re going to do it, this resource is for you.

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Game Materials
A Valentine Design

Game Objective
Create random Valentine’s from youth responses.

Game Preparation
Before the party, design a crazy-looking valentine, listing four parts to the message: (Be sure to leave plenty of space between the lines. You’ll want to experiment with different valentine designs and choose the one that works best. See the following example.)
1. Dear
2. I want you to be my valentine because
3. The thing I like most about you is
4. Love,

Game Play
1. At the party. hand out the blank valentines and instruct everyone to write his or her name in blank 1.
2. Then fold and tape the top over his or her name. It is important that no one sees the names.
3. Valentines are then gathered and randomly redistributed.
4. Everyone fills in blank 2 with a funny message. Fold down the top to cover blank 2.
5. Gather and randomly redistribute again
6. Everyone then fills in blank 3 and signs his or her name in blank 4.
7. Gather all valentines.
8. Read the valentines aloud to the group. Be alert to edit any portions of the valentine that might be embarrassing or inappropriate to the receiver.

Holiday Collection

Creative Holiday Ideas has over 300 pages of ideas to help you plan your next New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Halloween or Fall Festival, and Thanksgiving event. If you’ve ever wondered what you’re going to do for all these holidays and how you’re going to do it, this resource is for you.

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