Joyful Week 1 - Co-Op Class

 While I know this doesn't interest everyone, I like to share my co-op class lesson plans and ideas along the way because I search for ideas every semester and I wish that someone would share more!!  Especially teen classes.  So many teen classes are heavily educational and/or for credit.  That is not what I enjoy teaching - I focus more on relationships with our teens.  We spend 4 days focused hard on school for the sole purpose of being able to enjoy our Friday Co-Op, hang out with friends, and build relationships. 

I started teaching my Joyful class several years ago for the sole reason that Joshua asked for a "just teens" class so he didn't have to take all three hours with younger kids.  Well, teaching teens was not high on my to-do list!  I created this concept because I was already focused on the idea that we need to find joy in all aspects of our life.  When I first offered the class I had 5 students.  By the end of the first semester I was asked to offer it again . .. and then again. . .and again!  Each semester is fairly unique except we do "Breakfast and Bingo" every semester.  My class now fills up (15 students) and the idea of teaching it two hours so that more teens can participate has been brought up.  For now, though, I enjoy my one class.  

Week one of our semester started last Friday and here is my lesson plan: 

1) This semester I am sharing a short devotional around the idea of why we memorize scripture.  I'm taking my thoughts from HERE.  There are 10 Biblical reasons to memorize scripture so I'm sharing one each week. 

2) We then do our Joyful Bucket.  Each student has to name one thing that brought them joy throughout the week.  Sometimes this is hard.  I try to help them understand that their item doesn't have to be a "thing" - something they did or experienced - but rather even something simple they saw that brought them true joy. They also get to chose something out of our treat bucket. 

3) We review our scripture memorization.  We spend the semester memorizing scripture that we then share at presentation night. 

4) Our activities!  We did two activities this week.  First up we played a simple ice breaker game called "Human Taco". 

The basic overview is that each person received a paper with part of a taco listed on it.  They then had to find four other people with the different parts of a taco to make theirs complete.  We played two rounds and it went pretty quickly.  They laughed, it was was fun.  It would have been better in a larger space so I could have sent them to different corners making it hard to find people.  The game can be found HERE

Our second game was The Toilet Paper Game: 

The basic overview is that you pass around a roll of TP and each person takes "as much as you think you will need.".  Some took 1 piece and some took upwards of 20 pieces.  Once everyone has their pieces they are informed that they must share one fact about themselves for each piece!  Boy, we got some laughs.  I think those that took 1 wished they had take a few more and those that took over 20 (yes there were a couple of those) wished they had taken a few less!  One of the girls took 25 pieces and when she was done everyone said, "After that, we still didn't learn one new thing about you" HA!  I would recommend this game to any group.  It really was fun and you can find complete instructions HERE. 

Both of these games would make great activities for a youth group.  The Taco game would be great with a larger group too - the more people; the more crazy the search would become!