Sally from the primary team here! I live in a house with 5 other people and the lock down has been a great opportunity to get to know them better. Usually we’re so busy running from A to B that we don’t get the chance to spend time, but over the last month we’ve been playing games, watching films and taking time out to stretch together in the middle of the day. Getting to know my housemates better has been really fun.

I wonder what you do for fun? For each of us there will be different things that bring us joy. Some of us like big parties, others like sitting down with a good book, others still will enjoy long walks in the  countryside. For me, there’s nothing I like better than working on a new theatre show with my friends – some of my most precious memories are from those times.

When we think about the Christian faith, we don’t always think about having fun. But one of the things I recently realised anew is that Jesus was full of fun! He loved to spend time with people, eating and drinking and talking. He would pick up children and pay special attention to them (which didn’t happen so often in those days). He even used ridiculous images to help his followers understand important things about God – like someone walking around with a plank in their eye! Jesus was no stranger to fun, and we don’t have to be either. Being a Christian isn’t about walking around looking serious all the time, it’s about embracing all of the good gifts God gives us and one of those is the gift of joy.

So to share that joy, I thought I’d teach you game I’ve been playing with my housemates – I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

The Game of Categories

You will need: a pen and piece of paper each, a stopwatch.

Go around the table, ask each person to choose a category. These could be ‘book titles’, ‘animals’, ‘girls names’  – whatever you like.

Write them down on the left hand side of your paper and draw lines to make a table.

Top tip! Don’t choose categories that no one else knows. They won’t have very much fun if they can’t put down any answers.

Next, ask someone to choose a letter of the alphabet. Write that at the top of the first blank column of your table.

 

Then, set a stopwatch for 3 minutes. When you say ‘go’ everyone must write down something that matches each category, starting with the chosen letter. You can only have 1 answer for each category. When you’ve finished, it should look something like this.

Top tip! If 3 minutes is too short a time, feel free make it longer.

When time is up, everyone put down your pens. Then, ask one person to share their answers with the group.

For each answer that they are the only person to have, they get 5 points.

If they say something that someone else has written however, both people only get 1 point for that category.

If they didn’t write down anything (or if the thing they wrote doesn’t fit the category) they get no points.

Then go onto the next person and do the same until everyone has their scores for the round.

Then choose another letter and go again.

Keep on going until everyone has had the chance to choose a letter then you can add up your final scores and celebrate your winner!