Need an activity for a group of adults who want cool prizes? Trying to phase out of stockings for your older kids and into something equally as festive but a little less expensive (especially if you find yourself getting real gifts that cost a lot for stockings). Want to eliminate a gift exchange but still have prizes for people to take home? Whatever scenario—the Plastic Wrap Gift Ball Game might just be the answer!

We do this fun activity with our young adult children on Christmas Eve, and it would also be a great activity for a youth group, class party, family get-together, or office party—almost anywhere! It is simple to make (honest!) and fun for a crowd.

The idea is that you fill layers of plastic wrap that are rolled into a ball with gifts (candy and trinkets for a small-budget party or other things a little costlier for a bigger-budget gathering (see ideas below)). Then you pass that ball from person to person to unroll it. As it is unrolled, the person doing the unrolling gets whatever falls out or is in that layer (better description below).

PLAYING THE PLASTIC WRAP GIFT BALL GAME!

1) The people playing all sit in a large circle and the ball is placed in the middle.

2) The person designated to go first tears away the plastic wrap (the ball is on the floor in front of them) and gets the first prize he comes to/first one that falls out.

3) Then he passes it to the next person (or moves it over in front of the next person who does the same.

4) They continue to do that…they might see something they like better under the next layer, but they get whatever is next in the wrap.

As I mentioned above, you can put in it whatever you would like, but keep in mind when filling the ball how many people you will have playing. Do you want each person to get one thing? Two? Five? Be sure you have enough items spread throughout it for the number of people playing.

The number of rolls of plastic wrap needed will vary according to the size of the gifts, the number of people “playing,” the number of gifts/prizes that you want each person to take home, etc. We use seven or eight “cheapo”rolls from Dollar Tree to make the sized ball in the pictures. Those rolls have a small amount of plastic wrap on each roll. The next year I will probably buy a larger roll from Wal-mart and possibly spend a little more but have less tying together of the rolls.

If you are on a super tight budget, you could assign each person to bring two or three or four items (give a suggestion list). At the beginning of the party, someone could sneak away and make the ball with the items that people brought. This would make the activity affordable but still ensure that there is X number of prizes.

Other Thoughts

• Watch out for things with strong scents. Cinnamon car fresheners, peppermint candy, wintergreen gum, pine cone room scents, etc., can make your prizes smell and/or taste those scents/flavors.

• Things can get broken, so watch out for things not packaged. For example, my non-peppermint candy canes were all in pieces.

• If having things even in cost is super important to you, you could handle this one of two ways: You could be sure that every layer of the plastic wrap has similarly priced items. For example, you could put Chapstick, fluffy socks, and a five-dollar McDonald’s card in if you want each layer to have roughly eight dollars with the stuff in it. Or, you could do it such that the very middle of the ball has all the expensive things in it and the outsides of the ball have gum, mints, masking tape, etc. In this way, they would open the lesser-priced things first and then expensive things last. Both of these ways in sure that somebody doesn’t just end up with $1.50 worth of stuff and somebody else is up with $30 worth of stuff at the end.

*Don’t be offended if people trade at the end. That is a big part of the fun for our kids. “Hey, I’ve got a Super Size Twix here….anybody got any Skittles they want to trade?”