I had seen the Human Hungry, Hungry Hippos on the internet and wanted to do it for an activity at church. I was thrilled to find out that the other counselor in Young Women’s had already planned it for our next activity!
I loved the game Hungry, Hungry Hippos as a kid. My brother and I would play it often – I even remember taking it on road trips, and looking back, I have no idea why my parents would let us do that….
I take no credit for how the night turned out – it was all her doing! It was an immense amount of fun for the kids (and adults)!
She rented Furniture Dollies from U-haul to push the kids on. You could use skateboards – and I know another group that did do that – but she decided that the dollies would move better. The dollies move easily in all directions, unlike a skateboard that just moves forward and back. The other group that used skateboards told us that, while still fun, it was really hard to push/pull them and it was killer on the back!
The furniture dollies were easier to push/pull – but you still got quite a workout doing it! She put a couch cushion on the dolly to cover the hole and have something soft to lay on!
She attached a rope to pull the dolly back from the middle of the gym. One person would be on the dolly, another would push that person into the middle, and the third would be wearing gloves, standing in the corner, and pull them back once they had gotten the balloons.
She picked up some laundry baskets – easily found at the dollar store – to “chomp” up the balloons. I think we had almost 200 balloons! She also put some ping pong balls out – they were worth 5 points, to the 1 point per balloon.
We told everyone to bring a helmet, but extras were brought for those that forgot to bring one. Safety first! I would also highly recommend closed toed shoes (you don’t want toes run over) and to wear pants. My daughter had a few “rug burns” from it – nothing serious, but pants would have prevented it.
We used the volleyball net that is at the church, to “corral” all the balloons in the middle, until we were ready to begin the round. Two leaders then removed the net to start the round.
It was a fun activity and would highly recommend Human Hungry, Hungry Hippos for any youth (or adult) group! I uploaded a video – I have several minutes of video, but just chose a 15 second clip that showed all 4 people on dollies – so you could get the idea without watching 4 minutes of video 🙂 This 15 seconds was probably about 1/2 way through one of the rounds we did.
