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Pre-Meeting and Recreational Activity Ideas and Resource Guide

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Program Contact

Autumn Britt, 4-H Program Manager
Phone Number509-588-7817 Email Address • autumn.britt@wsu.edu

Adapted from Iowa 4-H Club Pre-Meeting and Recreational Activity Ideas and Resource Guide (PDF)

Estimation Games

  • Encourage youth to estimate the number of items in a container.
    • Putting items in a clear container provides a better opportunity for youth to make a good estimate.
    • Have a small container available with a pre-counted number of the same item in it, such as a pre-packaged bag or cup labeled with the number of items. This allows youth to get a clearer feel for how much space this quantity takes up in a container.
    • Use animal ear tags as your item. After youth submit their estimates, talk about the importance of ear tags and their role in livestock production. Consider sharing details of an upcoming animal weigh-in.
    • Use pennies as your item. You can purchase penny rolls from your local bank or credit union. Consider making your final number the same as club fees or use it as an opportunity to illustrate what a portion of the money needed for an upcoming event looks like in pennies to encourage fundraising efforts.

  • Estimating the weight of an object can be a good all-ages challenge.
    • Make sure the container or object is non-breakable and movable – youth will need to be able to lift or push the object. If it is bulky, consider putting it in a canvas bag or firmly attaching straps or handles that can’t easily detach.
    • Have a pre-weighed object on hand for youth to lift for comparison. This could be as simple as a 1 pound bag of rice or beans.
    • For smaller quantities, a kitchen scale may be a useful tool to have on hand.
  • Add a 4-H related twist:
    • Weigh water and use it as a bridge to talk about the importance of clean drinking water, the amount of water needed per gallon for livestock (and calculate the weight), or expand it to a STEM project calculating the weight of a local body of water before a visit.
    • Use animal feed as your item being weighed and discuss the pounds of feed necessary over a set time frame or other feed-related discussions or learning opportunities.
    • Fresh produce can weighed and then the conversation turned to pricing produce by the pound vs by the item, quantities needed for recipes or safe long-term storage, or health and nutrition topics.

  • Guessing the cost of consumer items is a good way to teach youth about the changes in markets over time, especially if you have prices from previous years on hand.
    • Make sure items have their date and location of purchase noted – this can be a good way to compare across regions, especially as prices for things such as fuel can vary widely.
    • Use items with which youth in the group should be familiar, such as eggs, milk, or bread.
    • Purchase locally, if possible.
    • Have youth organize similar items of differing costs by price, low to high, and explain their reasoning – this works best if the features that distinguish them, such as where they were purchased, are clearly indicated with the item.
    • Ask youth to calculate unit pricing to see if a lower-priced item is a good value as compared to a higher-priced item.
  • Add a 4-H related twist:
    • Use this activity as a way to introduce Consumer Judging events or a Consumer Management project.
    • Discuss why price differs on food items by region, especially if those factors have an impact on livestock or consumer goods youth are working with. This can include the cost to move goods and livestock between regions, feed and material costs, or the cost associated with labor to produce goods.
    • Exploring the cost of items can be a bridge into discussing the factors that go into hand-making things, such as thank-you cards. Is hand-making really free? What “hidden” costs come from creating things ourselves? What added value comes from handmade items? This can also be a way to branch into a conversation on the value of donating time to community activities, civic engagement, and volunteer opportunities or to make something to thank volunteers.
    • Chart feed and grain prices in your area so youth have a way to visually represent the cost of caring for an animal.

  • Have youth identify objects using senses other than sight as a way to hone observation skills and gain familiarity with common items in a new way.
    • Be aware of chemical sensitivities or possible toxins, especially for those who might be more sensitive to them. This includes essential oils or scented candles.
    • Consider possible allergens, especially when handling or smelling food items or plants.
    • Comparisons of look-alike items, such as two glasses of cola, can make interesting challenges.
    • Decide ahead of time which of the five senses youth may use to identify an item. The fewer senses allowed, the more difficult the challenge.
    • Visual challenges may include extreme close-ups of common items youth must use to then identify the whole.
  • Add a 4-H related twist:
    • Use this activity to start learning how to identify noxious plants, either that are dangerous to livestock or that are harmful to humans (such as learning to identify poison oak or poison ivy before going on a nature hike).
    • Learn to identify fruit varieties based on visual characteristics or by taste.
    • Craft an activity where youth identify potentially harmful liquids based on traits other than taste, such as antifreeze that may be deadly to animals. Take extreme caution when handling toxic chemicals.
    • Identify herbs and spices based on taste in preparation for food preservation or preparation demonstrations.

Brain Teasers

  • The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has a website just for kids on optical illusions! Challenge your youth individually or in groups with some of the illusions on their website.
  • Learn how optical illusions work and test out some common ones with the American Museum of Natural History. It walks youth through how they work with both images and video explanations of the illusions.

  • In these games, teams gather items in a category to gain points. Each team has a collector or judge who records scores.
    • The group will bring items they find to the collector to judge if they meet the theme requirements and to tally points for the items that do.
    • The leader calls out the item category for the group to find and bring to their team collector.
    • Item retrieval can be timed – suggested maximum time is thirty seconds to a minute.
    • The first team to bring an item to the collector receives ten bonus points. Remaining teams who can bring the item to their collector receive five points. Those who can’t produce the item, but can name it, can tell their collector and receive one point.
  • Example item category clues for the leader to use:
    • “Round and round it goes – sometimes as an accessory, sometimes as a neverending symbol of love.”
      Item youth are looking for: A ring
    • “Young children often learn the steps to this skill with a rhyme about a bunny going around a tree. No matter how you learned how to do this everyday task, it’s good to keep it tightened so you don’t trip.”
      Item youth are looking for: A shoelace
    • “Spearmint, cinnamon, wintergreen, or watermelon, this comes in many flavors, but keep it in your mouth and don’t let it end up stuck to the underside of a table or chair!”
      Item youth are looking for: Gum
    • “From humble origins and less than a year of formal education, the sixteenth president might be hanging around in your pocket.”
      Item youth are looking for: A penny
    • “This has two hands and a face, but isn’t alive.”
      Item youth are looking for: An analog clock or watch
    • “This has three curves and holds things together, but it can also be straightened into a line.”
      Item youth are looking for: A paperclip
    • “Put this up high to keep you warm when it’s cold out.”
      Item youth are looking for: A hat
    • “Each of the fifty states has their own design, but they’re all used exactly the same.”
      Item youth are looking for: A quarter
    • “One end helps record information and the other makes it disappear.”
      Item youth are looking for: A pencil

  • These games ask youth to hone their observation skills. You can use pre-made “spot the difference” handouts or you can create your own using photo editing software.
  • Lay out a collection of objects on a table and give youth a set amount of time to observe the objects without touching. Have them turn their backs, leave the room, or close their eyes and remove a few items from the collection. When the youth are allowed to look, see if they can identify the missing items.
  • Add a 4-H related twist:
    • Edit photographs from 4-H events for “spot the difference” games where youth compare the original photo to one that’s been altered.
    • Use a collection of items related to a 4-H project for the “spot the difference” game involving objects on a table.

  • Choose an animal or object and use the following template to introduce it to the group. Adapt it as necessary. Be elusive, but don’t give away the answer with the script.
    • I am a [group or category] and can be found [place].
    • In the summer, I like [use or activity].
    • But I don’t like [something it isn’t used for or avoids].
    • My friends would say I am [descriptor] and [another descriptor].

  • Have youth make their own themed crossword puzzles using an online generator or using graph paper and pencils (be sure to have plenty of good erasers, too!)
  • Have youth make their own themed word search puzzles using an online generator or using graph paper and pencils (be sure to have plenty of good erasers, too!)
  • Add a 4-H related twist:
    • Have youth use their 4-H project as the theme for their puzzles.
    • If youth swap puzzles with club members in the same project area, they can practice their vocabulary terms for project area contests.
    • If youth swap puzzles with club members who do not share their project, they will become familiar with a new area they may want to try in a future year.

  • Tangrams consist of a set of seven geometric shapes that can be made into different pictures. Puzzle sets can be purchased, made from paper, or used virtually online. Patterns are available from a number of sites, but this one features several image formats available for download.
    • Have youth compete to see who can get the farthest in a series of tangram challenges.
    • Have youth create their own tangram outlines and challenge each other to figure out how the shapes fill them.
  • Tessellations are shapes that interlock and repeat in a pattern. Examples include hexagons and diamonds in a pattern, curved shapes that interlock, and puzzle pieces.
    • Youth can create their own tessellations using pre-made paper shapes in a collage.
    • Youth can create their own irregular shapes to create tessellations.

Friendly Competitions

  • Any easily handled set of objects can be used for this two-player game. Item examples include pencils, spoons, craft sticks, soda or milk bottle lids, dice, buttons, or pennies.
    • Place all fifteen items on the playing surface. The first player picks up one or two objects.
    • The second player decides whether they will take one or two items from the pile.
    • Turns continue, each player choosing whether they will take a single item or two. The goal of the game is to force the other player to be the one who picks up the final object.
  • Add a 4-H related twist:
    • Use items related to the 4-H projects of the players: ear tags, finishing nails for a woodworking project, buttons for a sewing project, etc.
    • Ask players to share a fact about their project before picking up an item.

  • The game proceeds like traditional tic tac toe, but players must answer a trivia question before they are allowed to place their marker on the board.
  • Add a 4-H related twist:
    • Give the trivia questions the same theme as the players’ 4-H projects.

  • Try this Paper Airplane Race from Michigan 4-H’s Heads In, Hearts In.
  • 4-H At Home has an activity to explore the engineering process and physics called Fast Paper Airplanes. A free Clover account is required to access the full activity online. A PDF is available without an account.
  • Explore the science of flight with the Four Forces of Flight with Paper Airplanes video on YouTube from the U.S. Space and Rocket Center.
  • Walk through making paper airplanes with the Paper Airplane Project video on YouTube from University of Illinois Extension.

Creative Creations

  • Any blank paper, drawing utensils, and other craft materials are all that is needed for a greeting card making activity!
  • Consider making thank-you cards your youth can use to thank volunteers or donors throughout the year or holiday cards they can take to a local care home, fire department, or other nonprofit.

  • Required materials: short lengths of lightweight wire, such as copper jewelry wire, needle-nose pliers, and other objects to wrap with the wires.
    • Create coils and swirls around stones, marbles, or plastic toys to make works of art or pendants that an be hung on a necklace.
  • Recycling plastic coated electrical wire can be twisted without the use of pliers and become more colorful works of art.

  • Paper Quilts
    • Supply participants with identical sized paper squares they can decorate however they’d like.
    • Set a theme for the quilt – participants should use this theme as a guideline when they design and create their square.
    • After the squares are created, participants join the squares together. This could be achieved by taping them together one by one or attaching them to a larger backing.
    • Once the quilt is assembled, give participants to share how their square reflects the theme, their thoughts on making it, or the answer to a leader-created prompt.
  • Origami
    • Check out origami books from your local library for patterns and ideas.
    • Tavin’s Origami Instructions on YouTube are easy to follow tutorials on simple origami shapes. Diagrams accompany the instructions and can be found in the video description.
  • Snowflakes
    • Use online instructions to make paper snowflakes.
    • Let youth experiment with folding styles, cuts, and shapes to see what snowflakes they can design.

  • Decorate a brown paper bag with craft supplies of any kind. This is a good pre-meeting activity if later there will be items youth will need to take home with them.

  • Use a variety of food items, such as popcorn, cranberries, and dry “o” cereal, to create garlands that can be hung outside for birds.
  • Tips for making garlands:
    • Let popcorn sit out and get stale in order to string it more easily. Stale popcorn is less likely to break when the sewing needle is pushed through it.
    • Larger eyed needles are easier to thread.
    • Waxed dental floss is stronger than thread and popcorn will slide along it more easily. Dental floss will need to be thrown out after the garland is empty and cannot be left in the environment. Do not use fishing line, as it is a hazard to wildlife.
    • Unsalted and unbuttered popcorn is less likely to attract bugs.
    • Do not use cereal marshmallows on the garland.
    • Stinging two or three foot lengths and then tying them together is easier than trying to make one very long strand and will tangle less.

Physical Feats

  • Relay races can be created in a number of different ways. The common thread is that team members pass objects between one another to complete the race.
    • A water relay can be a fun race for a hot day. Fill a paper cup with a hole poked in the bottom and have teams transfer water from a bucket at one end of the relay line to the other.
    • Pass an egg between racers on spoons from one end to the relay line to the other.
    • Objects do not have to be passed by hand and could be tossed, bounced, passed between cups or bowls, or many other creative methods of transferring them between players.

  • Crumple up recycled paper to create paper balls. Divide the group in half and give each team the same number of paper snowballs. Place a dividing line in the room and let the team begin the “snowball fight” indoors and without snow! Snowballs can be picked up and re-thrown. At the end of a predetermined amount of time, the game leader calls for the snowball fight to stop. The winning team is the team with the fewest snowballs on their half.

  • Beat the clock! Use competitive Sport Stacking cups and teach youth how to stack cups in record time! Lessons are available on the Speed Stacking official website.
  • Try this cup stacking experiment to see how fast youth can stack ten cups into a pyramid.
  • Use teamwork with this cup stacking challenge involving four people, a rubber band, and two pieces of string!
    • Each team needs six plastic cups of the same size, one rubber band, and four pieces of string.
    • Instruct youth to attach the string in four locations around the rubber band.
    • Youth are not allowed to touch the cups with anything but their string and rubber band contraption.
    • Everyone in the team must hold one string in their hand to move the cups.
    • Challenge the youth to arrange cups in a variety of different shapes!
    • Some stacking configurations to consider:
      • Three columns of two cups. The first and last column consists of an upright cup with an upside down one on top. The middle column has an opening-down cup on the bottom with one upright on top of it.
      • A pyramid of cups, opening down, with three on the bottom, two in the middle, and one on top
      • Two columns, the base cup upright, the middle cup upside down, the top cup upright.
      • Two pyramids of three cups. The bottom two cups are opening-up while the top one in the pyramid is opening down.
    • These and additional cup stacking configurations are available on the Solo cup website.

  • In addition to the traditional game of tag, there are several variations you can try with your 4-H youth!
    • Everyone is IT:
      • At the start of the game, every player is IT
      • The goal is to tag others without getting tagged
      • If a player is tagged, they sit down exactly where they’re tagged and are out
      • If two players tag each other simultaneously, they’re both out
      • The last person who isn’t tagged is the winner
    • Sports Tag:
      • A variation on freeze tag. Once tagged, the player freezes in place until someone else taps the player and calls out a sport.
      • The frozen player has to then mime an action related to that named sport in order to un-freeze.
    • Handshake Tag:
      • A variation on freeze tag. Once tagged, a player freezes in place until another player comes by and shakes their hand, introducing themselves with, “Hi, I’m [name], how are you today?” and the frozen person replies, “I’m [name] and I’m fine.”
      • Players need to be aware of where the player who is IT is when they are shaking hands!
    • Double Tag/Hook Tag:
      • Designate the boundaries of the playing area.
      • Every player should find a partner. Partners hook arms at the elbow.
      • The partner pairs spread out throughout the playing area. They stay planted once they are in a spot.
      • One person is IT, another is NOT IT. These players are not part of the stationary pairs.
      • To start the game, the leader calls out “GO!” and then IT will try to catch NOT IT.
      • NOT IT can avoid being caught by either running away or by hooking arms with one of the paired partners. They then become the partner of the person they’ve hooked arms with and the other person in the pair is now released to become NOT IT and must continue fleeing.
      • If IT catches NOT IT, then the roles reverse and NOT IT becomes IT, and IT becomes NOT IT and must flee or hook arms with a stationary pair, sending someone else out to run as NOT IT.
      • At any point in the game, the leader can call “Switch!” to force IT and NOT IT to reverse roles.
    • Dragon Tail Tag:
      • Before the game begins, youth are given a tail made of strips of fabric or handkerchiefs they can clip to their pocket or waistband using a clothespin. A certain length of tail, predetermined by the leader, must hang loose.
      • Players cannot hide or hold their tail.
      • The person who is IT does not have a tail and tries to take a tail from another player. Once they do, they clip the tail to their own clothes.
      • The person who now does not have a tail becomes IT. They must now go find a new tail for themselves.
      • Tails cannot be taken back from the person who took it.
    • Octopus Tag:
      • The leader sets the boundaries of the playing area with two opposing ends designated as the “beach” – these are safe zones.
      • An octopus is selected to start in the middle of the playing area. This is the ocean.
      • All other players start on one beach. When the game begins, players must “swim” (players don’t have to mimic swimming and may simply run) across the ocean to the other beach without getting tagged by the octopus.
      • If the octopus tags a player, they freeze in place and become a “tentacle” of the octopus. Even though they can’t move their feet, they may move their arms in order to try to tag other players as they pass by.
      • Once all remaining untagged players are at one beach, the game leader will call for them to swim back across, now attempting to dodge the octopus and all their new tentacles.
      • The game ends when only one player is left untagged. The untagged player wins and may become the octopus for the next round of play.

4-H Publication Ideas

  • Provide a variety of 4-H curriculum books for the youth to peruse. Challenge youth to create as many titles they can for educational presentations on these project areas within the time allowed by the activity leader.
  • Youth could create titles of presentations they would like to hear from other members or they can use this as a brainstorming activity for their own projects at the start of the 4-H year.

  • Encourage youth to go through 4-H publications or to peruse the 4-H Projects and Programs page to find one fun fact about a project area to share with the group. It can be from their project area or one they aren’t familiar with.
  • Have youth explore 4-H history to discover something they didn’t know about the program they can share with the group.
  • Give youth posterboard or other supplies to create a display to share their fun facts at a club booth or display.

  • Give small groups of youth copies of 4-H curriculum books, one book per team. Challenge each team to come up with as many exhibit ideas as they can from a single publication.

  • In this activity, youth create a visual collage of their ideas for project in their community.
    • Draw a large cloud on a piece of flip-chart paper or posterboard.
    • Give youth sticky notes, notecards and tape, or slips of paper and tape and writing utensils for recording their ideas.
    • Hand youth a resource to use for finding civic engagement and community service related activity ideas. This could include hardcopies of 4-H curriculum guides or using their devices to peruse the National 4-H Civic Engagement webpage or Kittitas County’s Projects and Programs index.
    • Have youth come up with ideas and write each of them individually on their slip of paper and post them to the cloud. If youth come up with the same or related ideas, cluster them together.
    • At the end of the activity, determine what activity youth would like to plan and make that the objective of the next activity or meeting!

Get Acquainted

  • Create BINGO cards for club members to get to know each other! Using a five square by five square grid, fill each space in with a 4-H related activity relevant to your club. Leave the center space as a free space. Youth circulate among each other collecting initials of members who meet the criteria for each space. The leader determines how many BINGO rows need to be filled for club members to win a prize.

  • Acrostic Poems
    • A acrostic poem is a type of poetry where letters in the poem are lined up to spell out a particular word or phrase. In this activity, youth will create their own name acrostics.
    • Have participants write their names vertically down the side of their paper. Each line in their poem should start with a letter of their name.
    • An example:
      • Joyfully
        Attempts
        New projects and activities
        Even the ones
        That are difficult or new!
  • Backwards Names
    • Have youth write their names backwards and guess how they would be pronounced.
    • Everyone should introduce themselves with their backwards name and have others try to guess their forward-name. If the group already knows one another, use middle or last names instead.
  • Act Your Name
    • Participants should think of an action word that starts with the same first letter as their first initial. Have youth introduce themselves with their name and action – an example: “I’m Ruthie and I Run!”
    • Everyone in the group then does the action together.

  • Youth introduce themselves to a partner in the group, sharing their name and their years in 4-H. They then find three things they have in common and three things that are different before introducing their partner to the entire group at the end of the activity.