Be sure to share your Earth Awareness activities with us

PLANET KRYZYS: What a disaster!! (WIDE GAME)

This is a long game, ideal at a camp and good for a group of 8 or more teens or pre-teens, and divided into teams of more or less the same size and age mixture. It is based on survival, combined with fun and getting on as a group.

Materials needed and previous preparation.

Sign posts at each station, with instructions for activities to do there. Pieces of different thickness rope, matches, food or snacks, newspaper, small paper, cloth or card flags of a different colour for each station and one for each team per station, a triangular neck scarf, three or four scarves as blindfolds and a dice. For each team, a pole or broom handle, a note block, writing materials and something from which to make the team flag. A prize or extra flag for the winning team (optional). Helpers or Guards for the different stations.

The organizers go around the area before or during the camp to choose the best places for each station, and put up the sign posts before the game begins.

Landing Pad

At the Landing Pad, there is a sign post that receive the visitors to Planet Kryzyz (crisis), and a brief explanation telling them that they must explore different areas in their teams, but there must not be more than one team in any area at any time. In each area 8station) there are different activities to be done, and points or prizes according to the ability of the team to do them. There could be a limit of 10 to 20 minutes at each station.
If the group of visitors is not already formed into teams, this is the time to do it, starting for example with the oldest, or the youngest, or the next to have a birthday or the winner of an earlier game. This person chooses a companion, who in turn chooses another and so until the desired number of teams is formed. But, and here is the surprise!! Those elected do not form a team, but become the LEADERS of other teams!! This has always proved to be the fairest way of getting balanced teams. Then each new commander chooses someone from those left, who in turn chooses the next until all the members are distributed. And NO ARGUING.

Once the teams are formed, each team leader is given a note block, writing materials, a pole and flan elements, and they must think of a name for their team and design their flag, give each member a title, secretary, artists etc. Then without having any previous warning they all empty their pockets and thin what use they can put to the elements they have, for surviving on this difficult planet.
From there each team is sent to a different station, which could be four or more, but always trying to have at least one station more than there are teams. It would be decided that the guard at each station knows the next station to send a team to once the activities are done.

Some suggestions are:
Antigravity Area:

Rescue a bag of food or snacks necessary for survival on the planet, using only the elements you have on you or the given elements ( a stick, a stone a piece of cord……) The limits to the Antigravity Area must be respected, if anyone falls in, or steps over, they float across to the other side, and must be rescued before the food. The food bag can contain sweets, candy, snacks or even a simple lunch for everyone, and must be replenished for each team.

Cosmic Crater:

Here the team must rescue the guard who has fallen into the crater. They use three or more small pieces of rope of varying thickness, and helped by the given knots, (reef knot- for ropes of equal thickness, sheepshank for ropes of different thickness, and ballestrinque in the rescue loop. Once rescued, the guard inspects the knots and the team must then apply a bandage where the guard says he has been injured, (he could be wearing a triangular neckerchief as the bandage.)

Desert of Doubt:

Here things have to be recognized using touch, sight, smell, hearing and taste.. Blind folds are used on the team members for touch, smell, taste, and hearing. Touch is an everyday thing wrapped in paper, sight is a fragment of a photo to be identified, smell something in a small container, (spices, coffee, lemon…..) taste , identify something from another small container, make animal , vehicle, or motor sound sto be identified or prerecorded sounds. In this station even the guard can be difficult to identify, in a strange disguise, using a mask or face cover.

Frozen Fissure

Here each team is given a match box containing (three) matches, three sheets of newspaper and a bundle of firewood. They have to light a small fire, and boil water for tea, coffee, or to cook something simple like hot dogs, or instant soup, (depending on the time of day) and which could have been rescued from the Antigravity Area. If they do not get their fire going they get no points as they are frozen and must wait till the game finishes for their snack. After use the fire must be carefully put out so as not to give advantage to following teams and save against afire hazard. Points will be given on how quickly they light their fire, how few matches they use, etc.

Jurassic Jungla. (or another subject related to wildlife.)

I used a poster that had 20 different dinosaurs that had to be identified and a story invented as to why they became extinct. Say what living animals still resemble any of these, name some animals in danger. If other animals are used, you could ask for a detailed description, their life cycle and feeding habits. Write about animals in danger, and why, and suggest what can be done to help.
Then with the help of a dice the team draw its own monster, using 6 for the body, 5 for the head, 4 for front legs, 3 for back legs, a 2 for each facial feature, and a 1 for anything else, -tail, scales, hair etc Team takes turns but must throw o five or six to start.

Silent Swamp:

Here the guard gives the visitors a coded message and the code. The message gives the guard’s name, (something difficult using the not so common letters of the alphabet), says he doesn’t speak their language but would they please explain to him, by mime, actions or drawings something common from Earth, -a sport, a meal, a town, a famous person, indicating from the coded list what he wants explained.

Truth Valley.

No guard needed here. Prepare beforehand some puzzles, riddles, math problems and general knowledge questions in different levels. Team must answer a determined number, and points will be according to correct answers, and the level chosen to answer.

More stations can be added, they can be in any order but with the Frozen Fissure sometime after the Antigravity Area, and the Mountain of Memory being the last

Mountain of Memory.

Prepare a set of questions on the game e.g. What is the name of the planet? Describe the person in the desert. What is the Swamp guard’s name? What is the name of the different stations? What was the Landing Pad area like? Etc. Return to Landing Pad.

It is convenient to have a different coloured flag for each station, and one each for each team, so they get a flag to add to their standard, so they know where they have been and don’t repeat.

Back at the Landing Pad: The first team to get all (7) station flags and return here gets an extra ten points. Final activities: Teams must now explain why they chose their name, and what their team flag means. The points are added up, and opinions of the game are given. The teams then go their way to invent a sketch, poem song or activity about the game to show at the campfire.

Game originally taken from a Scout book

---

Games and Activities for children with recycling in mind.