At Spring View Middle School, twice a year, the Leadership team puts on a rally. In a rally, each academy (Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale for seventh grade and USC Berkeley, and Stanford for eighth grade) competes against each other to see who’s the “best”. Everyone gets dressed up in their academy’s colors and there’s a lot of cheering and screaming which makes for an awesome day of friendly competition.
Each rally is a different theme. For example, last year we did a Hollywood Movie Premier rally and a Summer Olympics Rally. This time, we put on a Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory one. Rallies take months of planning because we have to pick a theme, make decorations, think of tons of games, and perfect everything.
Games
Every rally has at about seven games that people from each academy get to play. For Willy Wonka, our first game was the “Mad Craze” where everyone in the academy participates. They have to do a scavenger hunt to find things such as: Someone with gold shoes, five people do a cartwheel, someone with a braid, etc.
The next game was the Everlasting Gobstopper. This was the all-time game where it;s one person and they do this activity the entire time. Last year, we had people build a small Lego set without instructions. This year, we gave one person from each academy a gobstopper on a stick and after 45 mins, we saw who licked the most.
Another game was Wonkatania. In this game, we had people get in a human sized paddle wheel and five people have to drive it to get across the gym floor.
One of my favorites was Gooses… Geeses. This game was like human sized Hungry Hungry Hippos. We bungie corded people to poles in a circle and with one socked foot and one bare foot they had to run forward and grab as many gold eggs as possible.
Every rally we also do a food game. For our Willy Wonka rally, we had two people from each academy fish out mini chocolate bars, without using their hands, out of bowls of mashed potatoes and pie filling while trying to avoid getting other things. This game made a huge mess!
A sixth game was the Juicing Room. Teams of people rolled across the floor to get a balloon filled with confetti and take it back to their tray. They next had to pop the balloon and search for a picture of baked potatoes, roast beef, and blueberry pie (which are what Violet’s gum tastes like in the movie).
Our last game was the relay, every rally has one. The first person had to unwrap a bucket full of mini Hershey Bars until they found five gold tickets. Then the next person had to eat candy buttons, without their hands, off of paper. After they went, someone had to put on a pair of socks, lay on the floor, and throw a “temper tantrum” and try to kick the socks off. Next, someone blindfolded had to break open a paper mache egg and dig around in whipped cream to find ten gummy sodas which resembles Fizzy Lifting Drinks. Finally, one person had to chew an entire roll of gum tape and blow a huge bubble.
Decorations
To decorate the gym, we made tons of different decorations. People made 3D candies to put on the walls, paper lollypops, paper “candy” mushrooms like in the movie, and many more candy-like things to cover the walls with. We also painted Wonka Bars to hang up too.
For each rally, a team of people from the Leadership team create a huge backdrop that we put all of our supplies behind. This years was the giant gate to enter the factory like in the movie.
Transitions
For every game, people have to set some stuff up. So we do transitions to entertain everyone while the set up crew is woking. I was in charge of these. We picked all of the Oompa Loompa songs, “I’ve Got a Golden Ticket”, and “I Want it Now” from the movie. Along with these songs, I signed teachers up to dance and act them out. We got props and costumes too. All of the students got a kick out of watching their teachers dance around the gym to goofy music.
This rally was so fun and full of awesome games, I can’t wait for our next one!
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