So we’ve finally reached the end of the school year, and the end of our unexpected little adventure in homeschooling. My kids love their end-of-year parties so much and they were both super bummed to miss them. So I wanted to give them the best little at-home end-of-year-party I could. I wanted to try a game, something fun and new, so enter…the human piñata.
What it is: An activity involving candy and running. Don’t worry! No one gets whacked with a stick. Instead, kids chase around the “human piñata,” someone with tons of candy attached to their shirt.
Best for: Kids! And one grown-up who’s a good sport
What you need: A cheap or old t-shirt, individually wrapped candy, a hot glue gun, and a piece of cardboard; also, small buckets or bags for children to collect candy in
How to play: Before you play, prepare your shirt by gluing the pieces of candy all over it. There are some tips and techniques to this:
- Use a tiny dot of hot glue for each candy.
- Use a low-heat glue gun, or give the glue just a second to cool down before you stick the candies on.
- Try not to press the candies on too firmly; you want kids to be able to pull them off fairly easily.
- Slide a piece of cardboard inside the t-shirt before you glue so the glue doesn’t stick to the opposite side.
- Use individually wrapped candies. Sealed candies like mini bags of Skittles work better than loose-wrapped candies like Smarties, Starbursts, Dum-dums, or Hershey’s kisses; the loose wrappers can easy tear or fall off.
- If you’re using small individually wrapped chocolates, especially if you’re playing outside, consider throwing the whole shirt (candies and all) into the fridge for an hour or so before you play, just to try to minimize the melting/smushing of the chocolates.
When your human piñata is set, dressed in their candy shirt and ready to run, say “Ready, set, go!” and the kids go crazy! Depending on the age and number of children you’re playing with, you might want to set up some rules (like no tackling the piñata). Make sure you have enough candy for all the children. For large groups, you might even have more than one human piñata. You also might want to give the children buckets or bags to collect the candy in.
This was a lot of fun for us! I think it’s just something so different than what kids usually do, it should create some memories.
Happy summer!