Thursday, July 5, 2012

Life-Sized Angry Birds

You know how sometimes when you imagine something or come up with an idea, reality is not quite on par with your imagination? My Teen Angry Birds program was the EXACT OPPOSITE of that!

I imagined using cardboard boxes to create life-sized structures to topple and helium balloons (for the pigs--if they float free then the pig was destroyed).  The dollar store was out of green so we used silver (I was going to tape pig pictures on, but even small pieces of paper were too heavy). We had plenty of room, so we used playground balls and threw them to knock down the structures. 


The building supplies
 Each teen took a turn building, and another teen got three chances to knock it down and then it was his/her turn to build. We did one round like this, and then they did a team round where they split into two groups and competed to see who could knock down the other team's tower in less throws.

The only thing I would change is to have more large boxes--I had TONS of smaller sized ones, but the balloons wouldn't fit.


So cute! So crafty!

We also made our own angry birds by making yarn pom-poms and gluing paper faces to them. The teens LOVED this (paired with snack time, of course!).

Check out the GIANT cardboard tubes I found!

We made a giant photo-op structure and decorated it with all the birds and pigs the teens made.

Finally, our last activity (and this was pretty much unnecessary) was another type of structure to knock down. We used Dixie cups and (shamrock themed) stress balls that I got on clearance. Sharpies worked perfectly to transform them into pigs, and I let each of the teens keep one at the end of the night. There was pretty much only one or two ways to stack the cups, and it was HARD to aim and knock them down. We used the pom-pom birds that the teens had made, and flung them with a large kitchen spoon. I would probably just skip this in the future.

Oink oink oink


 This was a very inexpensive program and it was FUN. I did start saving boxes a couple of months beforehand. I only bought yarn, snacks, balloons, and the stress balls.

Highly recommended!

6 comments:

  1. THIS IS FUN! Teens love to throw things and to say it's okay to throw it?? EVEN BETTER. Great program. Will have to try it soon, before Angry Birds dies out completely in coolness.

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  2. Awesome! Especially after reading your struggles with teens in the past. And I love it that you posted pictures so we can all see how successfully simple it was. You, my friend, rock!

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  3. I'm doing basically this same program in a couple weeks back-to-back with kids and teens. How were your boxes after being pummeled? As in: am I going to need to have 2 sets of boxes for each crew?

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    1. I was a little worried--some of the teens really threw with a lot of force! My boxes went through about a dozen rounds, and are fine to use again. The only ones that really take a beating are the bigger ones, so if you have enough/more bigger boxes, and save some aside for round two you should be fine (and this is DEFINITELY a program that will work for both teens and younger kids).

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    2. Thanks, Anna! Normally we have a giant supply of boxes, but my director just went through and cleaned the closet we store them in up after a recent book sale, and got rid of tons of boxes. I had a minor panic attack, since we're in a slow book-buying time for us, so we're not getting many boxes in. I have a few big boxes left from my move last year, so I'll just split those between the two sessions.

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  4. This is such a fun idea! I am definitely going to find a way to work this into my kids book club, I think they would have a blast.

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