Giant Angry Birds

In case you’ve never been introduced to Stuff You Can Use, their site provides awesome games and loads of ministry tools to help equip leaders, parents and volunteers. It’s an amazing resource we encourage you to check out.

The game that caught our attention was their real-life, giant-size Angry Birds game. The game was a huge hit with our youth ministry and we want to bring it to you!

PREP TIME – 2-3 Hours

ITEMS NEEDED – Giant Exercise Ball(s), Acrylic Paint for Angry Bird Faces (optional), Green Paper Lanterns, 2 Sets of Exercise Bands (for slingshot), Cardboard Boxes, Packing Tape, Large Open Space

GAME TIME – 30-90 Minutes

PARTICIPANTS – Everyone (divide into teams of 3 or more)

INSTRUCTIONS

While real-life Angry Birds takes some serious prep work, it may end up being one of the most memorable games you ever play!

To start, you’ll need to find a large space to play and order the materials. Begin by putting the boxes together so you can begin to configure your layout options. I recommend snapping a few pics to make sure you can reset each level equally.

Next, you’ll need to make your pigs and Angry Birds. My wife painted the faces on the birds using acrylic paint (just know that it will likely come off eventually). This took her some time, so if you have someone who is good at art, this is a great opportunity to delegate. As for the pigs, we found some templates for faces online and stuck them to the green paper lanterns.

The most difficult part of the game for us was the slingshot. We had two poles with tires at the bottom that we used for a volleyball net, so we ended up buying two rubber bike innertube and attached a fabric pouch to them. You can do this as well, but this made things WAY harder than it needed to be.

Since then, we’ve seen people simply buy two sets of exercise bands. Take two of the same color for the outside and use a different color for the middle. Make sure to use wide bands, as the smaller bands make it more difficult to secure the exercise ball. However, if you want to really go all out, check out what this guy made!

Now that everything is in place, it’s time to play the game. The rules are pretty simple:

Play 3 rounds. The first two, you create the setup, but on the last one, let the opposing teams configure the layout.

Give each team four attempts to launch their Angry Bird toward the pigs and award ten points for every pig that is knocked down. If they knock all of them down, you can decide to award bonus points.

Whoever has the most points at the end of the game is your winner!

BONUS TIPS

1. Test this game before you play! The biggest adjustment will likely be where you need to position the slingshot. How close does it need to be for your group to reach the target?

2. Use social media to both hype and recap the game, because it’s awesome!

3. When your done with the game, it’s likely that kids will want to create their own towers and keep on playing, so leave it up for a while after if you’re able.

4. Award some fun Angry Bird themed prizes – you could even give away the Angry Bird exercise balls.

If you play this game, we’d love to see it, so make sure to tag us! As always, you can also follow Student Ministry Games @stumingames to get more great games and resources!