Glow in the Dark Volley ball

When we played  the black-light volleyball, we used the comparison of "light and dark".. the influence of Satan in this world. When we turned out the lights, the site was awesome and inviting.  Satan makes everything in his "darkness" look appealing.  We discussed that is it is easier to "play the game" when we are in the "light".  Most of the ideas and lessons learned from the activity were given by the YW-YM themselves.  We always as the leading question," How does what we just did apply to the gospel?"  We as leaders are always amazed by the applications that our youth come up with. 

"Blacklight Volleyball"
 
I found this in one of my files while adding all the posts that have recently been on the black light volleyball games. This would help stress the idea of planning with a purpose and doing a great parable with fun attached. Sorry, I don't know who to give credit to.

1. Invite a speaker to talk about the principle of light and darkness. Doc. & Cov. 123. Explain that the "spirit of confusion" is something that Satan uses against us. Joseph Smith was surrounded with the spirit of confusion in the grove.

2. Wrap glow-in-the-dark tape around the volleyball.

3. Outline the volleyball net in glow-in-the-dark tape.

4. Prepare a poster written in glow-in-the-dark paint. "Satan has a plan for your life. . . do you?"

5. Hold volleyball and gloves under the light.

Play a couple of games of volleyball in the dark. Listen to the speaker explaining the principles of light and darkness. Have refreshments depicting light and dark i.e. vanilla ice cream and hot fudge.

Contributed by: Gerberta Black gerb_black@connect2.com

It took me forever to find a place that rented blacklights, so for those who live in Salt Lake City or Provo area, I'd like to give a shortcut! There is a place called "GTS" (General Theatrical Supply) in Salt Lake City. Their phone number is (801) 485-5012. They rent blacklights for $10 each per day, and we only needed 2 to "light up" our small gym. We also bought glow-in-the-dark tape from there ($13.50 for a 1/2" wide, 10 yards long roll) and spike tape ($8.00). The spike tape was fluorescent yellow and we taped the
center line and the boxes around the basket (the "key", my husband calls it). Spike tape works best for this because it is made to come up off of floor easily without leaving any sticky residue. We used the glow tape to illuminate the backboard and the rim of the basket. We bought 2 basketballs for $1.50 each at local thrift stores and painted them with glow-in-the-dark paint (we got ours from Lowe's for $2.49 for a 2 oz. bottle). An
important thing to note is that a white basketball will not glow under a black light. We were glad we tried this out the night before! We had about 30 youth and split them up into 3 teams, then rotated the teams after one team made 5 baskets. They each got the
chance to play about 3 times. We asked everyone to wear white t-shirts and then taped an "X" on one team's shirts and a straight line on another team with silver duck tape. The last team was just plain white. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me! Thanks,

Jane in Alaska  djco@gci.net
When we did blacklight basketball we spray painted masking tape with florescent orange and yellow. We put the masking tape on long strips of wax paper and lightly spray painted the tape with 2 different colors. We wanted two colors for the 2 teams..with
volleyball you wouldn't need 2 colors since there is a net. Don't spray paint to heavy or it doesn't peal off of the wax paper very easily. We spray painted an old basketball yellow florescent. The tape didn't stay on the basketball very well..so spray painting worked
well. But make sure you do this a few days ahead of time so that everything has a chance to dry well. We put tape around the lines of the basketball court and on the backstop and hoop..so they could see the backstop. I put a big X on backstop above the hoop. We
had the YM/YW wear T-shirts so they would glow and their most of their tennis shoes glowed also. We had each team put wrist bands on matching their backstop color. The entire gym was black..we used black tarp to cover the windows. One of the leaders had long blacklights so that wasn't a problem. We put them on chairs in the corners of the gym - one in each corner. We had a strobe light also..but that didn't do much and if
anyone has a seizure disorder it isn't recommended anyhow. Also, I used to work in a photo lab and we used white gloves for handling negatives. You could check at your
local photo lab or one hour developing store and see if they could sell you some white gloves. We used to sell them to customers for .05 a piece. Hope this makes since? Let me know if you have any questions. It was a fun activity..but took a long time to set up.
Make sure you have your YM/YW help you set up the gym. Have fun and good luck!

Donna - Portland, Oregon Wedonthunt@aol.com
If you go to any sports store, like Sports Authority or even a Wal-Mart will sell blacklight tape. We played glow in the dark volleyball and used the soft fabric volleyball that I purchased at Wal-mart and bought Elmers glow in the dark paint (looks like glue) in the craft section. They also sell many glow in the dark paints at Michaels. I wonder if the glow in the dark paints wouldn't work under the blacklight as well. If all else fails, use surgical gloves. They will get sweaty but they can play with them for a while.

Chrys pwbadboy@bellsouth.net
We played blacklight volleyball last night. Apparently the white volleyballs aren't reflective enough. I bought a cheap play ball (the kind you buy for your little kids) and painted it with fluorescent paint. Glow-in-the-dark paint does not glow under black
light. I tried it. I also had no luck finding blacklight tape, but white duct tape or white masking tape (from the paint store) work really well. We also didn't use gloves at all. We just had the kids wear white shirts. It was no problem to see them. Our biggest problem was that we had our best turnout in months and there were too many kids at one time when the bishop's counselor just told them all to go on the court instead of rotating (20 on a side is just too crowded for volleyball-- LOL) We also bought our black light from an industrial lighting supplier. The tubes are white and glow much better than the black ones.

Marie in Rainy so. CAl. mareinhardt@yahoo.com

We played this for a combined activity last month. Our kids really enjoyed it except for the crowd (see below). We told our youth to wear white t-shirts—the beehives planned ahead and all wore clothing in fluorescent colors which made it really fun. Instead of a regular volleyball (they DO NOT glow under BL) I bought a cheap neon colored play ball from Wal-Mart and painted it with stripes of fluorescent paint; regular neon paint does not glow but fluorescent will. You can use fluorescent masking tape on the floor and
across the top of the net if you want; because of the placement of our lights and the size of our cultural hall, we didn't need to. Check to see if you have an industrial lighting
supplier in your area. We have one here (called Grainger) and since my husband is a municipal employee they allowed him to purchase 40 watt 4-foot tubes without the fixtures for a substantial discount ($6.79 vs. $14 each). These are much better tubes than Home Depot or Wal-Mart sell. I bought cheap shop light fixtures--holds two tubes at Home Depot for $7 each. These are much brighter lights than the ones at Home Depot. 2 lights and a fixture would do it in a small cultural hall. We had two fixtures and it was almost too bright. Also, we placed each fixture on top of two stacks of chairs next to each other and ran a bungie cord around the back to keep them from being knocked off. They were about 4 or 5 feet off the floor. A word of advice: if you have a large group, you may have more success if you can divide the group in half and have half play a game in another room while the other half plays volleyball and then switch. We had 40 kids (our largest group in a year) in our tiny cultural hall and our bishopric counselor put them all on the court at the same time. It was chaos to say the least. Enjoy; we plan to repeat this one with smaller groups.

Marie in Sunny So. Cal. mareinhardt@yahoo.com
We tried to play blacklight volleyball last night but didn't have enough blacklights. We had 5 of the regular bulbs set up around the perimeter of the court and two 4ft tube lights positioned by the net. Those who were standing next to the lights glowed fine, but as for the ball and the rest of the youth....We wound up just turning all the lights back on and playing regular volleyball. It was disappointing.

Catfinwood@aol.com
Last night the Black light volleyball went great. People had brought so many friends. One girl who is less active brought 4 friends! My daughter brought 2 and another brought a couple of friends... it was great! We got BL flood lights at Wal-Mart for $6.00 each. 8 of them, about 3 florescent and one reg light bulb. You could see, I would have liked it showing more.... but your eyes adjust to it. We had gotten labels and put them on the poles, ball , foreheads, pants.. all over the place. Everyone was so excited. There were some problems with those who play well and those who stink. I guess you have to consider the competiveness factor. We can use the lights for other activities so the expense isn't too bad. I was pleased with it. It went really great!
Angie Angie stampn4u@home.com

We also had our Blacklight Volleyball this past Tuesday. We found that anything that is 100% cotton will glow in the dark under black lights. Therefore we taped white socks to our big beach ball and it worked great.  We didn't have real good luck with white masking tape. The activity went great, however.

June in Logan scarlett@bridgernet.com

You can also color objects with yellow highlighters and it will glow under black light. We did this once for a friends birthday and it was a riot! He had received a black light, and we all drew muscles and flexed, it was hilarious! Other colors may work also, but I know that the yellow will really show up! You can just draw right on your skin,
but some people won't like that...so something would have to be figured out. Maybe papers color with the markers?

Robyn RobynPG96@aol.com
For those of you who were interested we had our glow in the dark volleyball activity this week. It went really well. The only problem we had was for some reason our 48" beach ball got a couple of holes in it when we were playing.  Maybe from hitting the ceiling
of something, I'm not sure. Anyway, we just stuck another piece of tape over it, blew it back up and continued. I think if we did it again I would try and find a ball that was a little more sturdy, although the kids loved the size and it was light weight. We stuck several small pieces of tape on the ball, a few on the walls and net and then everyone had a 2" piece on the front and back of them. We did have to turn the lights on a couple of time to recharge the tape, but it was O.K. and we were able to patch the holes and blow the ball up more. I am talking to the guy I purchased the ball from to see if they have anything that would be a little more sturdy. The glow in the dark tape we ordered from Dillon Importing out of Oklahoma. Their phone number is (405) 948-1234 if anyone is interested in ordering some. They required a $25 minimum so we ordered tape and some glow in the dark bracelets that we had everyone wear also. They actually glowed better than I thought they would. They too are rechargeable with light. We used about 5 rolls of tape and then we collected it back in the end so we can re-use it by putting masking tape on the back or that double-sided tape. We ordered 12 rolls and then shared it with another ward. We also had enough bracelets to share. If you have any other questions please feel free to e-mail me.  We did not use any blacklights like a lot of others have. We had heard of others trying with blacklights and not being successful, we also had no access to them and did not want to purchase them, therefore we did not need to wear white clothing or anything that would be effected by blacklights. That was the whole reason for using the glow in the dark tape and bracelets. (You really wouldn't even need the bracelets, the tape alone would be just fine.)

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