Relay themed activities

Child_colouring

Use as many of these activities as you like and combine them with your own. The ideas have been split into effort levels to help you choose which work best for your Relay. 

You can also find some ideas of how to incorportate Relay ceremonies toward the bottom of this page. 

High effort

  • Relay camp out: Bring Relay to your home by camping out in your garden overnight! 
  • Relay laps: Challenge your Relayers to walk laps of their garden. Who can do the most? 
  • Make something purple: Celebrate survivorship by making something purple. Bake a purple cake, paint an old bookcase or dress up the dog in a purple tutu! Who can do the most creative activity?
  • Relay 24 challenge: Each team sets themselves a challenge to do something around ‘24’ to reflect the 24 hours of the Relay weekend. Perhaps 24 minutes of exercise, 24 hour sponsored silence or who can raise £24 in the fastest time.  
  • Relay step challenge: Who can do the most steps in a day?
  • Relay entertainment: Do you know any entertainers who would do a live virtual show or send a pre-recorded video? Would your Relayers make a donation to watch?

Medium effort

  • Create your team banner: A great craft activity. 
  • Relay outfits: Wear your Relay weekend gear - wellies, Relay t-shirts and wacky themed lap outfits!
  • Relay alphabet: Assign each team a letter from the alphabet and ask them to think of an activity e.g.
    C – decorate a candle bag, W – walk a lap. Who can come up with something for X or Z? We've created a sheet to assign team names, along with a few ideas here.

Low effort

  • Relay tunes: We asked the Relay community to suggest songs that remind them of Relay and created a playlist. If you and your Relayers use Spotify, you can listen to the playlist here. Alternatively, set up your own and ask Relayers to add their favourite Relay songs. Remember that you’ll need to comply with Spotify's Terms and Conditions of Use.
  • Candle bags: Decorate and dedicate a candle bag using our template, then display it in the home to honour every life touched by cancer. 
  • Relay wordsearch: Download our Relay themed wordsearch.
  • Relay colouring sheets: A great activity for children and adults! Download a tent and a Relay t-shirt colour-in sheet.  

Relay ceremonies

If you wanted to recreate the Relay For Life experience, you could consider a virtual opening, closing and Candle of Hope ceremony. Below are some ideas of how you could do this:

Opening ceremony:

  • Ask members of the Committee and survivors to pre-record a welcome message.
  • Think about who else could get involved in a pre-recorded message, such as local celebrities or well-known people.
  • Create a video montage of photos from past Relays.
  • Use the ‘Relay laps’ activity to create an opening lap that everybody can join in from home.

Candle of Hope ceremony:

  • Ask someone from your Relay to live stream or pre-record a poem.
  • Share the candle bag template with your Relayers to decorate and display, take pictures and share on your Facebook page.
  • Create a video montage of photos from past Candle of Hope ceremonies or use any past recordings.
  • Ask Relayers to join a minute of silence.

Closing ceremony:

  • Shout out to the Relayers who got involved and thank them.
  • Celebrate successes from your Relay.
  • Talk about your Relay next year, ask teams to makes pledges of how they will fundraise and spread the word of Relay through their networks.