A Journey to the Valley

The following is simply a list of "pioneer" ideas that could be adapted for your intended use.  For example, a family home evening, sharing time, quarterly activity, etc.

Old Time Photo Shoot - set up a lot of props and costumes for everyone and take lots of pictures.  Most digital cameras have different filters on them that can automatically take the pictures in black and white or sepia. 

Food Ideas:  Buffalo Droppings (Chocolate Peanut Butter Drop Cookies), Pioneer Recipes

Rolling a bike rim with a stick

Pioneer Colony Building - Have butter making the old way with cream and shaking it,  and then basic home building skills with hammer and nails in a plain board.

Buffalo Chip Hunt - Toss buffalo chips (you could even use the wood bark that is big and chunky or you could make buffalo chips from spray foam insulation and painted them brown) and see how far everyone can toss it.  Or you could have a game board with circles cut out (like a bean bag toss)...just use buffalo chips instead.

Horseshoes

Polish Horse Shoes - (See picture of game board here...you could make your own by putting three large plastic cups on top of a board) Place two boards eight feet apart. Each person or team will need six washers. Each team takes turns throwing their washers consecutively. Your goal is to attain exactly twenty one points by throwing your washers into the holes on the two boards. Each board has a set point value; the large hole is one point, the medium three, and the small five. Your score can never be greater than twenty one, so if you throw a number of points that would put you over twenty one, subtract that number from your previous score instead. (example: If you have an 18 before you throw, then your a 5, 18+5=23, so subtract 5 from 18 instead, giving you 13.) If another team's washer lands in the same hole as yours, your points are wiped out. If you have eighteen points or more, you must hit the top of the board with your washers, but if you have less than eighteen points, you may pass the turn to your partner. The first team to reach exactly twenty-one first wins the game.

Pie Eating Contest - This could be for the adults and/or children.  Contestants cannot use their hands.  Have them eat a slice of pie. 

Wild Game Hunt - Using a sling shot to hit little Xeroxed critters taped on two liter bottles.

Cricket Clothespins Toss - black clothes pins tossed into a barrel or bucket for points

Bobbing for Apples

Square Dancing

Have a taffy pull

  Family relay games -

Watermelon Seed Spitting Contest

Have the kids make log cabin houses made out of popsicle sticks and milk cartons.  They can also do potato printing on butcher paper.

Stick Pull - Like in Joseph Smith's time

Marble Mania - You will need a couple child sized wading pools filled about halfway with water, dump a bag of marbles into each pool.  Have two at a time in a pool trying to pick up the marbles with their toes.  Have them put the marbles in a Frisbee off to the side of the pool.  The person with the most marbles wins.

Tug-o-War

It's Gold!! - Pan for "gold"  by spray painting pebbles gold and mix with mud and other rocks.  Use disposable pie pans with punched-out holes.  Then use the gold pebbles as tokens for other games.

Possible prizes for the different events - licorice, peppermint sticks, salt water taffy, big Dill Pickles, Slim Jims, Beef Jerky, bamboo pea shooters & little sack of beans, very simple Pioneer rag dolls, both boy & girl dolls, " bear " skins (pieces of fake fur fabric).

Pioneer Treasure Hunt

Perform church ads--give each group a product and perform the ads 20 minutes later (for example,  try cricket control, seagull treats, wagon replacement parts, the flour cookbook, hunting equipment, bonnets, public service message against "menaces to society," etc.)

Pioneers' Journey West - this is just a basic history of what the pioneers went through in Nauvoo, Winter Quarter, Chimney Rock, Fort Laramie and then in Salt Lake Valley. I am going to do this with the help of the Young Men and Young Women as this is just a basic mural on butcher paper spread out through the park and they do a simple activity at each of the stations. Bed rolls with old towels and twine, stacking wood for a fire, that the kids did not wear there shoes because they saved them for special days, sew tears on canvas or clothing and bolt board for basic wagon repair, lastly have them paint on the mural what the pioneers saw in the valley.