One of the best family fun nights we had was called Fear Factor Bingo. I had volunteered to plan the Bingo night, but it seemed like it might be a little slow. So I came up with Fear Factor Bingo, and copied from the internet a bingo board and had the Fear Factor logo slashing through it. That night we played Bingo for half the night, with guest teachers being the callers. It actually went quite well, and we could have played Bingo the whole night and people would be content.
But halfway through we collected all the Bingo games and we started the Fear Factor Challenges. We had a stage set up, and all night the kids who wanted to do a Fear Factor Challenge put their names in a bucket. We split the grades into K-1, 2-3, and 4-5 and we picked out 5 kids from each group. The first was for K-1, and I described the challenge and then drew the names, so if a kid did not want to do it after hearing it he could decline.
K-1 I had baby bottles set up with carrot juice in them, and the 5 kids had to drink using the baby bottles as much as they could in a minute. (I had thought about clam juice, but that seemed too gross.) So they all sucked on these bottles and the crowd loved it. After a minute we determined who won and the winner got a official Fear Factor T-shirt that I had bought from NBC online.
Grades 2-3 were next, and they all got a plate of food put in front of them on a table and an empty plate next to it. With their hands behind their back, they had to pick up the food with their mouths only and transfer it to the empty plate. No problem. The only thing hard was the food was canned oysters, clams, snails, mustard covered kipper snacks and other seafood. They were all items bought from the local grocery store, nothing was bought from any specialty store. So it is bad enough picking up food without your hands, but then to have it be this smelly stinky seafood it was really a hoot to watch the kids. The winner was the person who transferred the most food to the empty plate. (The plates were prepared in the teacher's break room, and did it ever smell as you walked in there.)
Grades 4-5 they actually had to eat the food. They got a plate of food with raw spinach, raw portabella mushrooms, some ghastly blue cheese and the main course was 2 varieties of head cheese. I pointed out to the crowd that the ingredients listed on the head cheese is pig snouts and tongues. One of the types of head cheese was so bad when I cut it into pieces before hand I started gagging immediately just smelling it. They had a minute to eat as much of the food as they could. The top two winners got Fear Factor T-shirts since it was so bad and I had bought an extra shirt so I covered all the sizes. (The principal told me later that one kid ending up throwing up later. I looked surprised and she said not one of the contestants, he was in the audience.)
Just a note. In order to determine who won we used a scientific scale that weighed to the fraction of a gram, and we weighed the bottles and plates before and after, subtracting to get the total food moved or consumed. I would suggest you do it this way also, do not expect the winner to be the kid who empties his plate.
And to end it we had the parent challenge, that I said a parent and a student could do together. We drew 5 teams, and I told the kids their job was to hold the bag of marshmallows. To the parent I gave each a brown lunch bag. When I said so, each kid would hand the parent a marshmallow, which the parent would put in their mouth. They could not chew it or swallow it, it just had to sit in their mouth. Then with the microphone I went down the line and each parent had to say "Chubby Bunny". Then each kid gave each parent another marshmallow so they had 2 in their mouths, and we repeated saying "Chubby Bunny". Keep repeating with marshmallows until they finally can't handle it anymore and they have to spit the mass of marshmallows out into the paper bag. Once you get 3 or 4 in your mouth you have a hard time saying Chubby Bunny without marshmallow drool dribbling out of your mouth. One dad told me after that the worse is the marshmallow juice starts trying to go down your throat and you end up gagging. It was hilarious, and the parents were great sports. The winning parent got a Fear Factor coffee mug.
We also had some theme days during the week. The principal said after that it was one of the best school family events she has been to. It was fun doing it also.
(Side note, the food was a little costly. I went to Cub Foods which is our local chain, and spent close to $120 on food for the Fear Factor Challenges. I wanted to ask the cashier that wasn't she going to ask why I am buying all this really awfull food and then 5 bags of marshmallows. A organic seafood lover with a big sweet tooth?)
We did charge admission, which that plus concessions covered the cost of the slimy food and the Fear Factor Prizes. The Bingo supples we got free from the Knights of Columbus
I can mail out the flyers we sent home advertising the event if anyone is interested.
