The seven days of God's creation are a hot topic in Christian youth group meetings. Kids involved in youth groups are of the age when they are being hit regularly with challenges to the credibility of the Bible from society and at school. Amid the serious discussion, break up the mood with lighthearted games or plan activities that take the youth outside their regular comfort zone to share the creation story with others.

Gather objects to represent the days of the creation for use in a memory game to test your youth group's memorization skills and knowledge. Place five or six objects to represent the days and events of the creation in a box. Start with a flashlight, sunglasses and a bottle of water. Add a small jar of dirt and a cut flower. Cover the box with a towel. Ask the kids to look at the objects, then cover them again and ask the youth questions about the contents of the box. See if someone can name all of the objects. Write the answers on a paper chart. Once the kids have named all of the objects, discuss which day of creation each one represents. Write the number of the day of creation beside the corresponding item on the chart. Place more items in the box to represent the rest of the days of the creation, and repeat the exercise.

Let the youth create an educational experience for the younger children in your church. Designate a day for the younger kids to visit a room where the youth have set up a Creation Celebration. Let teams of two or three kids work on one of seven tables — each depicting an aspect of the creation. Encourage teams to make the tables educational and interesting.

Kids who are depicting the third day can fill tubs with sand and provide plastic plants to stick in them. Youth at the table can teach visitors that land masses were formed and abundant plant life sprang forth on day three.

If a team of youth is depicting day seven, they can provide pillows and soft blankets around the floor of their table to "rest" on to teach that God rested on the seventh day of creation. Since the seventh day was set apart for worship, the youth can play a CD of praise music at the table, too.

Your youth group will have to revisit some of the skills they practiced in preschool with a game that takes an early-childhood favorite, play dough, to a new level as the star of a game of Creation Pictionary. Set jars of the play dough on a table. Divide up the kids into teams of two or three. Whisper a day of creation, or an event that occurred on one of the days, in the ear of one of the players on a team. When you say "Go," the player who heard the whispered clue opens a tub of play dough and sculpts a representation of the words he heard. His team must guess what he has made and what day of creation it belongs to — within five minutes — to score a point. Play until everyone has had a chance to sculpt and a chance to guess.