Pastime party

You’ll need

Craft materials (for example, tissue paper, pipe cleaners, stickers)
Materials related to your hobby

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 if you’re short on helpers.

Setting up the activity

Ask everyone to bring some props or information about their hobby.
If anyone hasn’t got a hobby, they could bring items, information, or pictures for a hobby they’d like to try (or one they think is interesting).

Your pastime party

Everyone should set out their items or displays around the room.
Split into small teams. Each person should travel around each of their team members’ displays. Each team member has two minutes to talk their team through their display.
At the end, each team should present one of their hobbies to the rest of the group.
Allow some time for a few questions at the end. People might want to ask things such as:
- Why did you start the hobby?
- What do you enjoy most about it?
- How does the hobby make you feel? For example, is it calming? Is it a challenge?
- How can you develop the hobby? Can you get better at it? Can you do more?

Reflection

This activity helped you think about trying new things. How did you feel when you first tried your hobby? How do you feel now? Your hobby was a new thing you tried – are you glad that you gave it a go? Did anyone else’s display make you want to try another new thing?

This activity also needed you to communicate about your hobby. Was it easy to communicate? How did you choose to communicate? What were your main points? What sort of words did you use – did you have to explain any? How did it feel talking to different sized groups?

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.

You must run your activities in line with the Safeguarding Code of Conduct for Adults (Yellow Card) and report any concerns to the UK HQ Safeguarding Team.