Minion Day

Minion Day was our most anticipated Summer Theme Day by far for the kids and leaders (myself included). We did a Minion Day back in 2013 before minion merchandise was everywhere, and it was so popular that we decided to bring it back with some serious upgrades. Just for fun, here is a picture of our set from 2013. What a difference!?

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2013 Minion Day Set

Set Design:

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Stage Left

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Stage Right

You can see that we used pretty much the same elements on both sides of the stage for this set design. You can’t see them too well in the pictures, but there are two minions peeking out from behind the TVs on both sides of the stage. They are made entirely from yellow, blue, black, and white craft foam. I made them in pieces, then assembled them with hot glue. The pieces are as follows: yellow body, blue overalls, black gloves (for hands), black mouth, black gru symbol, white goggles, white teeth, and black straps for the goggles. I colored the goggles in with silver and black sharpies. I used hot glue to attach the black pipe cleaners to the head (for hair). To make sure the minions don’t flop over, trace their assembled bodies onto cardboard, cut them out with an x-acto knife, and use hot glue to attach the foam minions to the cardboard pieces.

Minion Pieces

Minion Pieces

Assembled Minion

Assembled Minion

The larger minions are about three and a half feet tall and are just cardboard cut-outs. They were made using large sheets of cardboard I got for free from Sam’s Club, yellow and blue poster board, black and white craft foam, black pipe cleaners, and brown, black and silver sharpies. First, I free-handed the basic shapes of the minions on the sheet of cardboard in pencil. I wanted to make one of the minions tall, thin, and with one eye, and the other minion shorter, squatty, and with two eyes. Once I had the basic shapes, I cut them out with an x-acto knife. Next, comes the time-consuming part of the process: making all the little pieces of the minions. I made the body and arms out of yellow poster board and the overalls out of blue poster board. I traced the cardboard cut-out onto my yellow poster board, then cut it out using scissors. The poster board isn’t wide enough to make the body and arms in one piece so I had to do the arms as separate pieces. I traced the part of the body the overalls would cover onto the blue poster board, then free-handed the overalls in pencil, and cut them out with scissors. I also made a small pocket shape for the front of the overalls. I decided to make all the other pieces out of craft foam to make them look more three-dimensional. I traced the hands and feet to make the basic shapes of the gloves and boots out of black craft foam. Make sure you make them bigger than the actual feet and hands to ensure you don’t have cardboard showing. I made a big black circle for the Gru symbol and two smaller black circles for the buttons on the overalls. I drew the Gru symbol onto the big black circle using a silver sharpie. I also added some black “stitching” on the overalls using a black sharpie after I took the pictures above. The goggles were somewhat time-consuming to make, but they turned out great. I traced a large circular container to make the goggle shapes, then traced a slightly smaller circular container to make the inside line of the goggles. I filled those lines in with silver sharpie to make the goggles. I used a yellow sharpie to make the eye lids and black and brown sharpies to make the eyeballs. I traced a small coin to get a perfect circle for the brown part of the eyes. I measured the remaining space on the sides of the minion faces and made two black strips for each side of the goggles out of black craft foam. For the hair, I cut four black pipe cleaners in half and hot glued them on the top. When I had all my pieces done, I hot glued them all to the cardboard pieces. I cut a long piece of cardboard for the stand for each minion and hot glued them to the back.

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Side Banner

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Back of Room

For the side banners, we found a fun image of tons of minions crowded together. I also made a bunch of small minions that we put all over the room. I bought three different $1 jumbo stencil pads of minions in the dollar section at Target. I cut out the minions on the front, photo-copied them onto card stock, and cut them out again. We made twelve, 10-foot minion garlands by hole-punching the sides and tying them together with fishing line. We put the garland on the front of the stage, on the sound booth, and over the entry. We used the leftover minions on the banners, windows, and all around the room. My favorite and easiest decoration we made were our minion lanterns that we hung around the room from the hooks on the ceiling. I bought a 12 pack of yellow lanterns and some paper minion goggles on Amazon, taped the goggles to the lanterns, and hung them.

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Info Table

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Gen Kids Entrance

Our info table and entrance were super simple and super cute. We used one strand of the minion garland around the info table, wrapped the stand of the tv in yellow streamers, and added our last minion lantern under the tv. In the entrance, we used these minion wall decals, and more of the minion garland was hung in the door way.

 

 

 

 

 

Games:

I had so much fun creating two original games for the kids to play for Minion Day. I may have spent a few more hours than anticipated making these games, but they turned out awesome and were a huge hit with the kids.

 

Space Killer:

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Space Killer Game

Space Killers Game Piece

Space Killers Game Piece

This game was based off of the game the girls and Gru play at the carnival in the first Despicable Me movie. I looked up a picture of the space ship in the game, drew the shape in pencil on cardboard, cut it out with an x-acto knife, and drew the details in marker. I duct tape the space chip to a long dowel rod I bought at Wal-mart. For the game all you need is the space ship, two nerf guns of any kind, lots of darts, and a willing leader.

How to play:

  1. Choose two kids from each team to play.
  2. Flip a coin to choose which team will play the game first.
  3. The kids on the 1st team will be given nerf guns and a bucket of nerf darts.
  4. A leader will stand about ten feet away from the kids holding the alien ship, moving it around.
  5. The kids will have to stay behind the line of tape during the entire game.
  6. Each team will have 1 minute to try to hit the alien ship with their nerf darts.
  7. The team that hits the space ship, or the the team that hits the space ship the most times wins. This game went surprisingly well, and everyone wanted to play!

 

Minion Race:

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Minion Race Game Pieces

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Make A Minion Piece

This is a four-part minion relay race game. For this game, I found two yellow and black jump ropes at Dollar Tree (you can use any jump ropes, but I thought it was fun that they were minion colors), two hula hoops (I covered two hula hoops I already had on hand in yellow duct tape), two bananas, and the make-a-minion game pieces. The make-a-minion part of this game was made using yellow poster board for the minion bodies, and craft foam for all the pieces just like the ones for the set. I made the minion bodies out of yellow poster board and hot glued them to a piece of cardboard. I made all the pieces, then put velcro on the bodies and pieces for the game.

How to play:  (Before picking kids for the game, set up all 4 stations with a leader and orange cones).

  1. Choose four kids from each team to play.
  2. Station one kid from each team at each of the four parts of the race.
  3. The first two kids will have to jump rope twenty times then run and tag the kids at the second set of cones.
  4. The two kids at the second set of cones will have to peel and eat an entire banana, then run and tag the kids at the third set of cones.
  5. The two kids at the third set of cones will have to hula hoop for thirty seconds without dropping their hula hoop, then run and tag the last two kids at the fourth set of cones.
  6. The two kids at the last set of cones will have to assemble their minion correctly.
  7. The first team to successfully complete all 4 parts of the race wins! Surprisingly, the hardest part of this game was eating an entire banana.

Costume Contest:

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Gru, Minion, and Pastor Corinne

Our leaders and kids had an amazing time dressing up for Minion Day. I wish I could say that I made the awesome Minion costume in the pictures above, but we actually borrowed it and two other minion costumes from another children’s pastor in the area. Gru (aka my wonderful husband who does an amazing Gru impersonation) led the costume contest. All of the kids who dressed up got a large banana laffy taffy wrapped in these cute free printable minion wrappers I found on Pinterest. The winner received a minion trouble board game. Gru’s costume is pretty simple to put together. All you need is this Gru mask, black pants, black shoes, a black jacket, and if you can get a black and grey striped scarf (we just happened to have one a relative made for us) to finish it off. My minion costume was a yellow minion shirt I got at Wal-mart, a yellow minion hat I got at Target, these awesome minion goggles, overalls (I got mine at a garage sale), and my DIY minion shoes. All you need to make these simple minion shoes are some plain white shoes (mine are the cheap ones at Target), fabric markers, a silver sharpie, and some patience.

 

 

 

Lesson:

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I wrote an original lesson for Minion Day entitled: How To Become God’s Minions. I compared minions and their loyalty to Gru to how we should follow God. It was a 4 point sermon with a scripture and a video clip from the first Despicable Me movie to back up each point.

1. Believe in God – I used the video clip of the banker and Gru’s mom not supporting and believing in him (the rocket scene).
2. Give to God – I used the clip of the girls and the minions giving their money and other items to help support the plan to steal the moon.
3. Follow God – I used the clip towards the beginning of the movie where Gru says “assemble the minions”, and all the minions drop everything they are doing to come see what Gru has to say.
4. Celebrate God – I used the clip at the very end of the movie where they have a big dance party.

 

 

If you are interested in seeing the full outline of my lesson you can check it out here: Minion Day Lesson. Here is our full schedule of our service for Minion Day: Minion Day PC Schedule.

What have you done or are you doing to use popular kid’s movies, tv shows, or video games to help kids learn more about God’s Word in your ministry?