Theme of the Week is a post where we ask readers like you to comment with ideas for a particular theme. What ideas and suggestions do you have? What game, craft, apparel choice, theme meal, evening activity, special event, song, skit, or anything else would you do at camp if your theme was…
Fear Factor
Here are my five suggestions for Fear Factor. Leave yours in the comments area below.
- Let’s Start off with the obvious, eating bugs. You can get edible crickets and BBQ meal worms online. I attended a camp fair the other day and a mother who sent her 8-year-old to our camp last summer said that the highlight of his experience was that he was the camper on his team that ate the cricket. Crazy, huh?
- Create buckets of nasty feeling items (cold spaghetti with olive oil or corn starch and water) and have items like plastic spiders or keys to locks buried in the buckets. It’s best if the buckets are covered with a black plastic bag so the campers cannot see what they’re putting their hands into. Obviously, cut a slit in the bag so the campers can reach in the bucket.
- Have kids eat dog food. Just don’t tell them it’s actually Cocoa Puffs. They’ll realize it after they have bravely tried it.
- Any high ropes element will make most campers uneasy. Or is that just me?
- Blindfold a camper on each team and have the rest of the team VERBALLY guide the blindfolded camper through an obstacle course or “minefield”.
Omg i love this Idea. This year i get to be camp councelor for our church and the lead councelor asked me to an activity..so i think this is the winner.
Good luck with that Alma.
A couple of years ago I went to a pet store and bought a bunch of crickets. I then placed them all in a jar that I had blacked out so the campers couldn’t see inside and they had to pick up a penny from the bottom of the huge jar. Unfortunately, the crickets didn’t jump on anyone’s hand or arm as they were reaching in so it didn’t scare anybody – until I took the paper off the jar and the last two campers could actually see what was in there. Then they didn’t want to stick their hands in.
We did this theme last year at camp and it was so popular we are doing it again but I am trying to find some new ideas to keep it fresh. The first challenge they had to complete was to place their arms in a large bucket of ice cold water. I had a point system and you would receive a different amount of points for how long you could keep your arms in (ex. 1 point for 5 seconds, 2 for 10, etc…) I was surprised at how much the kids liked it!
Next we did the crickets in a jar with quarters at the bottom, they could see in the jar and some where freaked out but most were very brave! This had them talking for awhile.
We had an eating contest. I don’t remember the contents but it was normal food but a gross combination. I think it was noodles with ketchup and gooey filled marshmallow eyeballs. They had to lay on their stomach and eat with their hands behind their backs. It was hilarious. We also did a blindfolded obstacle course. And a haunted maze. All in all, very successful – kids love showing how brave they are!
We have been doing Counselor Fear Factor as a night activity for overnight camp for as long as I can remember working here. We first have the Counselors sign Waivers agreeing to participate and have them do random things like eat ketchup, peanut butter, stick their hand in a shoe box (which has a whole cut out of the bottom and the host has thiers inside it) and they have to get something out of it, we blend a McDonalds happy meal (french fries, hamburger, milkshake) and have them attempt to eat it. It is always a hit because the kids get so pumped up cheering on their favorite counselors and the staff can withdraw from the activity whenever they want.
We try to change up different ideas every year so thank you so much for the new ideas!
Great ideas, Kasey. Thanks for sharing. We’ll try that blended happy meal with shake this summer.