10 Ways to End the Club Night Well

The entire club night has been great and the last activity completed. Now parents are lining up at the door and the kids are … running all over the place, giving the impression that your club is totally out of control. (Not to mention the child who just escaped, lost in the mess of people.)

Here are some ideas on ending well.

1. Have kids sit in a circle. Make kids aware of upcoming events. Pass out papers. Announce the winning team. Close in prayer – but let kids know that the final “Amen” doesn’t mean “get up and run.”

2. Sing. Sing some active songs and throw in a silly song or two that you wouldn’t sing during club itself. You need two or three leaders to keep the singing going while kids leave one by one (as parents show up).

3. Play a game such as “I Spy” to keep kids occupied (but not running random places).

4. Have a Bible quiz. Give out stickers for right answers. (Just to keep the focus on you and not what is going on at the door.)

5. Give kids paper and pencils and have them draw a Bible character or for older kids – see how many books of the Bible they can write down.

6. Play Reviewsical Chairs. Play musical chairs as usual, but the one left without a chair challenges one of the kids in a chair. Then you (the leader) asks a question and the one (the challenger or challengee) who answers it gets the chair. Tailor the questions to the ability of the kids answering. You could even designate who gets first chance to answer to eliminate one person answering all the time.

7. Start a sentence and kids finish it. The sentence can be silly or serious.

“I think if I were Daniel in the lions den, I would have ___________________”

“If I were cooking breakfast for you, I would make _______________________”

“If I were president, the first rule I’d make is ______________________________”

8. Ask questions to get to know the kids better. “What’s your favorite book, TV show, thing to do on a Saturday …”

9. Give each kid (older children) a piece of paper and then give them one minute to write down something they learned during the club night. They give the paper to their leaders before leaving.

10. Play the What-Happened-to-the-Kids Game. This doesn’t work all the time, but is fun and doable once in a while. My preschoolers loved it. Tell the kids that they need to be really, really super quiet. That way their parents won’t hear them and will wonder what happened to them! The parents will think they all disappeared! Most parents say something like, “I didn’t hear you. I thought everyone had gone” which makes the kids wildly giggle.