Did you ever want to have a snowball fight in June? We did it! It was so much fun.
The snowball activity was a lot less structured than I envisioned. It was difficult to enforce the rules (Keep the snowballs in the ropes/Don't hit people in the head). We also started with way too many snowballs. It turned out to be much more challenging and fun when people had fewer to use. The forts didn't work out the way I thought they would either. They didn't stay up well (the wind blew them over or they fell down, even while we were building them). The kids improvised. It was fun to see my brother in law, the engineer, building structures that were more sturdy.
I was really happy with the snowballs themselves. I was concerned that they'd get dirty, but they didn't. Toddlers and adults alike played happily with them. Nobody got hurt (although I did put a stop to people using building sticks as bats and swords). People used snowballs with a parachute activity. They went far enough without going too far. And they do have a pleasing squishiness. Someone took my card, because she is always looking for interesting game events, and she told me I should definitely bring the snowballs.
We had two hours of activity time before they showed Frozen on a large, outdoor screen. I brought hopscotch, a ring toss, tic tac toe, bowling, a seated spinner, a foam puzzle, plastic to draw on, and several table games (pattern pictures, pinball machine, and a crocodile dentist). The "dressing snowpeople" activity didn't quite work out.
The snowball activity was a lot less structured than I envisioned. It was difficult to enforce the rules (Keep the snowballs in the ropes/Don't hit people in the head). We also started with way too many snowballs. It turned out to be much more challenging and fun when people had fewer to use. The forts didn't work out the way I thought they would either. They didn't stay up well (the wind blew them over or they fell down, even while we were building them). The kids improvised. It was fun to see my brother in law, the engineer, building structures that were more sturdy.
At one point, I asked the children to spread out (they were all in each others' faces). I said they could have 4 people in a square. It was also really expensive ($250). I could have bought 2 buckets (that was all we needed, and I got 10). I wanted the activity to be really compelling. I suppose on a larger, marked field we could have gotten a lot more people and used more snowballs.
I was really happy with the snowballs themselves. I was concerned that they'd get dirty, but they didn't. Toddlers and adults alike played happily with them. Nobody got hurt (although I did put a stop to people using building sticks as bats and swords). People used snowballs with a parachute activity. They went far enough without going too far. And they do have a pleasing squishiness. Someone took my card, because she is always looking for interesting game events, and she told me I should definitely bring the snowballs.
I was surprised we had to recruit kids. At first nobody seemed interested. I would have liked to have two - one for smaller kids. It also might have worked to have some kind of timer & bell, so there would be separate encounters. I did end up "resetting" once (having the kids put away the snowballs and start again). I needed to explain the rules to the new people.
Once the kids ran out of snowballs (because I picked up the ones that went out of bounds), I passed out 3 per person and told them the rules as I passed them out (next time I'll pass them out by the player instead of leaving buckets on the field).
