Come on down!

I serve on my ward's RS meeting committee, and our most recent activity was all about becoming more self-reliant and spending our money wisely. We had people make presentations about couponing, smart shopping, and organization, and then I got to host the last segment. I say host because my part of the presentation consisted of playing games from The Price Is Right!

To make things fun I had the theme music play as I called contestants up, and I even made a skinny black microphone, just like Bob Barker always used:

The first game was Pick A Pair, which doesn't entail much. You have 6 items, made up of three pairs that cost the same amount. All the contestant has to do to win is correctly pick a pair, but I went a step further and had them try and pair up all three. Contestant # 1 knocked it out of the park.

For all the items I used little boxes as display stands, which looked something like this:

I taped up the box flaps with the prices behind them, so all I had to do was cut the tape for a dramatic reveal.

The second game was Punch-A-Bunch. I picked this one because I already have a small reusable punch board I made for a Primary lesson. All I had to do was switch out the tissue paper and add some dollar signs:

For this game Contestant #2 had to look at 4 items and tell me whether they were priced too high or too low. For every correct answer she got to punch a hole in the punch board, behind which cash prizes awaited. This was a very low-budget affair and the cash prizes were coming out of my spare change collection, so I priced them between 5 cents and 5 dollars. Luckily for me Contestant #2 got greedy, passed on getting $2, and ended up with 5 cents.

The best game I saved for last. Perhaps you remember a certain TPIR game called Cliffhangers, which debuted in 1976? Well, here's my miniature version, complete with a tiny yodeler who moves up and down the mountain:

Contestant #3 had to price three items, and for every ten cents she was off  the yodeler climbed higher and higher up the mountain to the yodeling song from the show. Luckily she didn't go over, because my yodeler is on a string loop, meaning I couldn't make him fall off the mountain if I tried. Even so, I'm very proud I was able to build a miniature version of the game.

Here's the yodeler up close:

And here you can see the backside of the game, and how I had to weigh the yodeler down with pennies to keep him from flipping over to the front:

He moves on a string that runs through three metal loops, so all I have to do is pull and up he goes. 

Perhaps the best part of the night was after the activity when I was putting everything away, and a few sisters came up and said how much fun they'd had. One of the sisters in particular is newer in the ward, so we don't know much about each other, and our conversation went like this:

her: That's so neat that you made the game from the show.

me: Well, I had a lot of fun building it. It isn't good for much outside of playing Cliffhangers, but I promised Optimistic. he could play with it when I got home, so he's excited about that.

her: And how old is he?

me: Ummm...thirty.

her: Oh, I thought he was your little boy!

me: No, he's just a fan of game shows.