Today we begin our March Madness mad march.
Okay, I didn’t laugh, either.
This is my first year to try to do the famed Seminary March Madness. Last year I visited a couple of Seminary classes during the first week of March and saw how much fun they were having, so I decided to create my own version. I called it Isaiah’s Insanity because we were just beginning our three week study of Isaiah. I altered my form a little bit, and the kids will get tickets to spend at the auction based on their daily activities.
In my class students earn points for
- arriving on time
- completing the reading
- singing audibly
- sharing a missionary moment or devotional
- sharing a “Last night in my reading I learned”
- leading a scripture mastery game
Here’s a link to the new March Madness form if you’re interested.
Zones (teams) also compete against each other in a series of games that we will play on Fridays. My friend DeAnn has students compete by teams each day to perform a simple scripture mastery exercise. Points are tallied for each game. The winning team gets to choose a slip from a bucket of little slips of paper that have ways to earn some extra points. This is the “madness” part of March Madness. I have altered hers a little for my class. I just printed these as a list and cut them out. I will put them in an old shoe box for kids to choose from.
Here’s what I created:
- Call on someone from another zone to recite John 14:15 WITHOUT HINTS. If they can’t recite it you get 300 points.
- Your zone wins 50 points!
- Your zone wins 50 points!
- Your zone wins 100 points!
- Name the twelve apostles for 500 points. You may work as a group. Closed book.
- If someone on your zone has passed off Revelation 20:12–13 your zone wins 200 points.
- Call on someone from another zone to tell something they learned in yesterday’s lesson. If they can’t start sharing within 15 seconds, your zone wins 50 points.
- Call on someone from another zone to tell something they learned in yesterday’s lesson. If they can’t start sharing within 15 seconds, your zone wins 50 points.
- Call on someone from another zone to tell something they learned in yesterday’s lesson. If they can’t start sharing within 15 seconds, your zone wins 50 points.
- If you completed all the reading assignments for the past four class periods, your zone wins 200 extra points.
- If you completed all the reading assignments for the past four class periods, your zone wins 200 extra points.
- Name your favorite New Testament story and tell us why and your team will win 50 points.
- Name your favorite New Testament story and tell us why and your team will win 50 points.
- Name 5 women mentioned in the New Testament for 100 points.
- Recite Romans 1:16 for 100 points.
- Name a missionary from our ward and where they are serving for 50 points.
- Name 3 of the cities to whom Paul wrote letters for 50 points.
- Trade points with another zone!
- Trade points with another zone!
- Trade points with another zone!
- If you were on time today, your zone wins 100 points.
- If _____ attended the most recent dance, your zone wins 100 points.
- If _____ played rugby within the past 48 hours, your zone wins 100 points.
- If there were at least three people in _____’s car this morning, your zone wins 100 points.
- If _____ brought breakfast with her to class today, your zone wins 100 points.
- If _____ is wearing something with the color green on it today, your zone wins 100 points.
- If _____ ate pasta at any time during the past week, your zone wins 100 points.
- If _____ is wearing something with the color yellow on it, your zone wins 100 points.
- If _____ shot at anything during the past week, your zone wins 100 points.
- If _____ has visited her niece within the past 3 days, your zone wins 100 points.
- If _____ is wearing shoes that slip on, your zone wins 100 points.
- If _____ has food in her purse or backpack, your zone wins 100 points.
- If _____ has been to the church building in the past 24 hours, your zone wins 100 points.
- If _____ read from any book besides the scriptures within the past 24 hours, your zone wins 100 points.
- If _____ has both hands on a table at this very moment, your zone wins 100 points.
- If _____ is holding an electronic device at this very moment, your zone wins 100 points.
- If _____ rode shotgun to Seminary this morning, your zone wins 100 points.
- If a member of your zone has more than $1.00 in change on them, your zone wins 100 points.
- If any one in your zone has read the entire Book of Mormon, your team wins 200 points.
- If you have Jedi’d at least 5 scripture passages your zone wins 100 points. If you have Jedi’d 10 or more, your zone wins 300 points.
- If a boy on your zone sings one verse of “As Sisters in Zion” your team wins 400 points!
- If a girl on your zone sings one verse of “Ye Elders of Israel” your team wins 400 points!
- If a boy and a girl on your zone sing a duet of the first verse of ‘Love At Home” your zone wins 600 points!
- Recite any scripture mastery for 300 points!
- Recite any scripture mastery for 300 points!
I plan to have the person who will give the devotional choose a slip each day. That will let everyone choose at least one slip during the month. I will also try to fit in a 3-5 minute scripture mastery game occasionally so that the winning team can choose a slip as well. I’m hoping that will keep up the momentum. Fridays will be full zone competition days for however many points I’m in the mood to give out.
Members of the winning zone will each receive a bonus number of tickets to spend at the auction. I haven’t settled on how many yet, but it will probably be pretty high. Other place will get some additional tickets, too, just not as many. Auction items are silly things that students donate. Food items are big. We also auctioned date-in-a-bucket with a movie, candy, and popcorn, gift cards, fairy wings, bouncy balls, etc. It’s all just silliness.
There are lots of ways to do March Madness, but it’s a great activity to help kids make it through March. This weekend daylight savings time ends, so it’s going to be especially difficult to come to class the next few weeks, in the dark coldness at what our bodies tell us is an hour earlier. March Madness helps us get through it. After that, it’s spring break, and just one more quarter left in the year. Crazy.
March Madness Links
Here are some links to other March Madness ideas for Seminary you can use:
- March Madness, Baby! – game idea
- March Madness by John Bushman
Please let me know if you find any March Madness ideas I can link to…. There’s a lot of stuff on Latter-day village, but it’s a paid site, and I can’t link directly to the files.
