For our 50’s fun night, we advertised it as “Hot April Nights,” and any month could be inserted. We asked the youth to dress in 1950’s clothing and had fifties music blaring. We played the following games for our group of 100. The kids, 6th through 12th grade, loved it and are still talking about it a year later!
Hula-Hoop Hoopla:
We had teams of equal size line up along one side of the room. The first person in line put their forehead on a bat (or dowel) and had to spin around it 10 times. have the person in line behind them count for them! Then they had to run to the other end of the room and get a hula hoop to go around themselves 5 times. It’s hilarious to see the crazy dizzy walking! First team to get all of their members to complete the task wins.
Bazooka Joe:
We had enough bubble gum for every youth. We lined teams up facing each other across the room. In relay fashion, they had to run across the room (so individuals were running towards each other) to a piece of paper taped on the wall. There they unwrapped a piece of bubble gum and started chewing it. They had to then blow a bubble and then stick the bubble to the paper on the wall. We gave prizes for most pieces of gum that stayed (more gum!) and for the biggest bubble. The kids loved this for the gross slobber factor. We used bazooka joe gum, but it is really hard and takes A LOT of chewing to get it to be blowable.
T.V. Dinner Roulette:
Like hot potato, but with T.V. dinners! We gave each youth a spoon and heated up 5 of the most disgusting T.V. dinners we could find. The youth stood in a circle facing in and we put all 5 dinners in the circle at some point and started the music. When the music stopped, whoever was holding the dinner was out and the person to their left had to take a bite of the dinner. We kept this going until we ran out of food and had only a few kids left. Either the kids flip for the dinners or think they will die from the food. It’s great!
All prizes given for games had 50’s leanings – Barbie, Mr. Potato Head, etc. We went on some 50’s retro websites and looked at what was invented in the 50’s and gave those things out for the winners.
To end the evening, we made a 30 foot bannana split (thanks to our parents it was already assembled and ready to go at the end of the games!). We made ours in 3 pieces of plastic rain gutter with connectors. When the evening was over, we took it outside and hosed it out. We did this right after the musical dinners game so that everyone already had their spoon and could just dig in.