Play ‘Minute to Win It’
You’ll need
- Stopwatch or phone
- The items needed for each challenge
Before you begin
- Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
- Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help out if you’re short on helpers.
Setting up the tasks
- Prepare your challenges in advance, gathering any equipment needed.
- For any challenges involving food, check for allergies, eating problems or dietary requirements and adjust the challenge as needed. This may include ensuring no cross-contamination during food preparation.
- Let people know if they’ll need any specific equipment for your session.
Setting up the challenges
- Gather everyone in a circle.
- Tell everyone you’ll be playing Minute to Win It, so they’ll have to complete a mix of challenges, with only 60 seconds to complete each one.
- Share your boundaries and ground rules, such as no going in certain areas. Make sure everyone knows they need to keep themselves and each other safe.
- Decide whether you'll play individually, in pairs or in small groups. You could change this for each challenge, but make sure everyone knows who they’re pairing or teaming up with before you start.
Playing Minute to Win It
- When everyone’s ready to begin, read out the first challenge, then shout ‘Go!’ when everyone can start.
- Everyone should complete the challenge. Remember to keep track of time with a digital timer or a stopwatch. You might find one on a phone!
- After 60 seconds, make sure to stop everyone.
- Depending on the challenge, everyone could take it in turns to share their results when the time is up.
- The person leading the activity should award points, depending on who completed the challenge.
- Another adult or young leader should help keep track of scores. You could also use a whiteboard or piece of paper to note down the points.
- Remember to give out bonus points for creative entries or for good teamwork!
- Everyone should keep playing with new challenges until the meeting ends.
Minute to Win It ideas
Give each team (or player) two balloons. Their goal is to keep their balloons from touching the ground, but they can’t hold the balloons.
If the balloon touches the ground, they're out. The last person or team standing wins.
You could increase the challenge level by adding three balloons per team or player. You could also only allow teams or players to use one hand or no hands to make it harder.
Give each player a spool of thread and several needles. Have them thread as many needles as they can in the time allotted. Whoever threads the most needles wins!
You could also thread pony beads or hoop cereal onto pipe cleaners for a less fiddly challenge.
Have each player place a cookie on their forehead. In one minute, each player’s goal is to get the cookie into their mouth using only their facial muscles—no hands.
Players must make a stack of 25 pennies in under a minute. They can only use one hand, and the quickest player to stack their pennies wins.
Give each player two paper plates. Put 25 sweets, such as Smarties, on one of the plates and leave the other empty. Each player puts a straw in their mouth and uses suction to transfer all 25 sweets to the other plate.
To make it easier, players can use one hand to hold the straw while it’s in their mouth.
Place two bowls in front of each player, one empty and one filled with ping pong balls.
Players should put a spoon in their mouth, holding it by the handle.
Each player must use their spoon to scoop the balls up. Next, balancing the balls on the spoon, they should transfer as many ping pong balls as possible to their empty bowl.
Players can use their hands to pick up a ball if it drops. However, they can use their hands to place the ball back in its original bowl.
Ask teams or players to name as many capital cities as possible during the one minute. Players should write them down, then hand in the paper after a minute.
Give each player or team a large pile of toothpicks. They need to spell out as many three-letter words as possible without breaking or bending any of the toothpicks. Whoever has the most words when the timer goes off is the winner.
Pick a fun word or phrase and have players rearrange the letters to create anagrams or new words, which can include shorter words.
For example, the ‘Scouts’ has ‘costs’, ‘cots’ and ‘toss’.
You could use an anagram generator online for inspiration.
Players should write them down, then hand in the paper after a minute. Whoever has the most after 60 seconds is the winner, though you could give out extra points for best word.
Cut the front of a cereal box up into small pieces, just like a jigsaw, then have players or teams try to put it back together in 60 seconds or less.
You could also use small jigsaws, such as 25 piece ones, for people or teams to do in the time.
See who can bring back the biggest leaf after 60 seconds. You could also have challenges, such as longest stick or insect with the most legs.
See which player or team can build the tallest tower, either out of building blocks or playing cards. If it falls over, the player or team has to start from the beginning.
Set up hula hoops on the floor, about 3m away from your players. Next, have players attempt to roll tennis balls into the rings. Whoever has the most balls in a ring at the end wins.
You may want to do this one at a time to make sure everyone knows which ball belongs to which player.
Set up 6 empty soft drink cans in a pyramid, about 2m away from the players. Each player then has a go at flicking rubber bands at the cans to try to knock over the entire pyramid before the time is up
Have a bowl of Tic Tacs, or other similar sized sweets, at one end of the space in a bowl.
Players need to use tweezers to pick them up one at a time, then they need to carry them across the room and put them in a different bowl.
If players drop it on the way, they can pick it up, but only using the tweezers. Whoever has the most in their bowl at the end of 60 seconds, wins.
In pairs, people should sit on the floor back-to-back with their partners. Ask them to link arms and attempt to stand up. Once they do that, they can sit back down and do it again. Whoever is able to stand up the most frequently in one minute wins.
Push a potato across the floor from one side of the space to the other with just your nose. See how many times you can get it across the space in 60 seconds.
Using only their nose (and a bit of Vaseline on the tip), see how many cotton balls can each player move from one bowl to the other. The player with the most cotton balls moved wins the round.
Stand up an empty cardboard tube, such as a toilet or kitchen roll cardboard tube.
See how many lollipop sticks people can balance on the top of it. If any fall off, they don’t count.
Set up an empty egg box around 2m away from the players. Players should try to bounce ping pong balls into the egg box and whoever has the most in the box after 60 seconds is the winner.
If the box becomes full, you could empty it, then go again if you’re still within the 60 seconds.
Reflection
This activity was all about giving everyone the chance to work under pressure, work as a team and solve problems in a creative way.
Ask everyone how they found the activity. Which challenges did they found the easiest or most difficult, and why? What was it like having the time pressure? How did you focus and stay calm? For the team challenges, how did you communicate and work together? Is there anything you’d do differently next time?
Did they find it easy to think of fun ways to complete any of the challenges? Not all problems are easy to solve, but thinking outside the box and being creative are great skills to learn and can help in a lot of different situations.
Safety
All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.
- Rubbish and recycling
All items should be clean and suitable for this activity.
- Active games
The game area should be free of hazards. Explain the rules of the game clearly and have a clear way to communicate that the game must stop when needed. Take a look at our guidance on running active games safely.
- Heavy and awkward objects
Never lift or move heavy or awkward items alone. Ask for help or, if possible, break them down into smaller parts.
- Food
Remember to check for allergies, eating problems, fasting or dietary requirements and adjust the recipe as needed. Make sure you’ve suitable areas for storing and preparing food and avoid cross contamination of different foods. Take a look at our guidance on food safety and hygiene.
- To make this activity easier, give people a longer amount of time to do the challenge.
- To make this activity harder, you could add in extra elements, such as doing the challenge with a hand behind your back, using your non-dominant hand, trying the challenge backwards or doing the challenge blindfolded.
- Think about how you’ll involve everyone in the group. Some people might not want to take part in the tasks. Could they help think set up challenges or keep score?
- You could change the challenges, equipment and movements to suit your group, such as using larger objects, leaving a bigger gap between cones, or using a large print font for printed materials.
- People can move at their own pace, so you don’t need to make it time-based competitive unless it works for everyone.
- Let people work in pairs or groups to make sure everyone’s supported in taking part. If needed, let people be in bigger groups or have a young leader join a group to help people.
- Check for allergies, eating problems or dietary requirements and adjust the challenge as needed. This may include making sure there’s no cross-contamination of packaging, during food preparation, storage and serving too.
- If it’s too noisy and anyone doesn’t like the noise, remind everyone to be quieter. You could have a noise level warning system, the person could wear ear defenders, or you could run the activity outside or over a larger space to reduce the noise. Shutting doors and windows can help to reduce external sounds too.
- Avoid shouting or using whistles, as some people could find this distressing. Instead, try putting your hand up to get everyone’s attention at the end of the 60 seconds.
- If someone isn’t comfortable holding hands with others, ask people to hold a piece of material, such as a necker or piece of rope, between themselves and others to connect them together.
All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.
