Tuesday Tips: Activities for Mentors and High School Age Youth

1. Go to a record store and talk about your favorite music.
2. Learn how to write editorials to the newspaper and letters to your local politicians.
3. Make mix CDs for each other.
4. Watch a movie together, and discuss it afterward.
5. Make t-shirts together with markers, fabric paint, screens, or spray paint and stencils. Or transform old t-shirts. There are online guides with hundreds of ways to remake a t shirt into a new t-shirt, bag, backpack, leggings, skirts, etc.
6. Go to the zoo, or if you are unable, visit www.cuteoverload.com instead.
7. Make a 'zine (a mini-magazine) about whatever you both have in common. It could be a comic book, literature, poetry, or journals. Photocopy your zine and hand it out.
8. Go to a bookstore together, pick out magazines and tell each other about the strange and fascinating things you find inside. Learning about other cultures and people builds understanding and tolerance.
9. Take old photos and make a scrapbook. Share with each other as you sort through the old photos.
10. Play a board game together. Learning about healthy competition and sportsmanship fosters integrity.
11. Go to a free concert.
12. Make up your own “dice” game, and after you both agree on all the rules, play it!
13. Plan a week‟s worth of meals or plan and cook one meal together.
14. Do-It-Yourself (DIY) - learn how to make something together that you'd never thought you'd learn how to do. www.instructables.com and www.wikihow.com are loaded with low-cost or free DIY projects, reliable information, and extremely creative (and sometimes zany) ideas.
15. Plant a garden.
16. Go for a walk in the park. Fly a kite or go on a bike ride.
17. Bake easy-to-make cookies and have friends join for group “Milk and Cookies”.
18. Take turns teaching each other how to do something you are good at.
19. Volunteer together: at a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter
20. Go thrift shopping or bargain hunting.
21. Make stencils for custom spray paint decorations on furniture or walls.
22. Build or fix something together (e.g. Tree fort, school‟s broken fence).
23. Learn how to fix a car, or part of a car together, like checking/changing the oil or removing a flat tire.
24. Go to a museum that is interesting to both you and the mentee.
25. Build a bicycle. (In Richmond, there are several organizations that donate used bike parts and give tutorials on how to build them. Contact Books On Wheels at 804.840.6510.)
26. Work on a resume.
27. Shoot some hoops.
28. Learn to write a thank you note.
29. Find a summer job.
30. Go hiking.
31. Work on homework together.

Source: Virginia Mentoring Partnership, 2009