Youth Alpha

Slow, slow, slow your boat........

You will need:

A number of chairs spaced out around the room – precisely as many chairs as people playing.

How it works:

Choose one of your players to be the ‘boat’ – this player must move at an agreed slow pace – walking only.

Agree the speed at which they must walk and then they must not change this pace. (If it’s a challenge to slow the ‘boat’ down, then get them to walk by placing one foot precisely in front of the other, heel to toe.)

Position the ‘boat’ at the front of the room.

Everyone else in the room must sit on a chair (the harbours). Because you have exactly the same number of chairs as you have players, there will be one chair/harbour free.

(If you are playing this with a lot of people, then you may want to appoint more ‘boats’ to make it more challenging)

The ‘boat’ can start walking towards the free chair – at the agreed pace. It is up to the rest of the group to move between their chairs so that the free chair becomes occupied by someone before the ‘boat’ can get there.

The boat must always move, at the agreed pace, towards the chair that is free.

The object of the ‘boat’s’ game is to sit down.

The object of the other players game is to make sure the ‘boat’ never sits down.

(The object of Youth Alpha is to help young people share their faith.)

If the boat manages to sit down/dock then the game is over and another boat must be launched.

You can make the game harder by varying the rules. For example if someone moves from their chair or goes to stand, then they can’t sit back down. A silent rule perhaps, where communication can only occur with exchanged looks. Add more free harbours, add more boats etc

We hope you enjoy the selection of youth games on Youth Alpha. For lots more games, nautical or otherwise, to play with youth groups then log on to www.youthalpha.org