Amazing Race: Library Edition is a program that I’ve ran twice before. It always brings out a huge crowd – and for those of us who have a small budget – it’s a great program to run!

For those of you who are not familiar with the show, teams race around the world completing challenges. The team that completes the challenges in the least amount of time, wins the race.

If you’re running this program in the library, the best way to do it is have the teams travel to continents: Europe, Asia, Australia, Antarctica, Africa, South America, North America.

Teams are given either a Detour challenge or a Road Block. In a Detour Challenge, teams have a choice of completing one out of two challenges. In the Road Block, teams have to complete that challenge.

Teams

I had four teams: Red, Yellow, Orange, and Green. One member was the “team captain” – and they were in charge of running the challenges to the pit stop and back (so there wasn’t a huge crowd). If teams got a challenge wrong, they were sent back to try again.

I wouldn’t do this program with anyone younger than 8 years of age.

Envelopes

Download the template for envelopes here

I printed these on colored paper (don’t have a coloured printer here) and then glued them onto envelopes.

Challenges

Download the game cards here

Europe
Road Block: In this roadblock one member of the team will draw their own version of a famous painting. I used Mona Lisa.

Asia
Detour: in this detour, teams will have a choice of making one origami butterfly or Chinese lantern for every person in their team.

Australia
Road Block: In this roadblock, one member of the team will participate in a boomerang toss. You will have to decorate a boomerang and toss it into the box.

Antarctica
Detour: In this detour, teams will have a choice between completing a cool quiz or an Antarctica Word Search

Africa
Road Block: In this roadblock, team will have to complete an African animal which is which quiz

South America
Road Block: In this roadblock, one member of the team will participate in a game called Canica. The goal is to shoot marbles into the doors of a shoebox. Each door has a number telling you how many points you earn if the marble goes into that door. Earn 10 points to get past the roadblock.

North America
Detour: In this detour, teams will have one choice between creating ONE totem pole bookmark for everyone in the group OR completing a fill-in-the-blanks worksheet about North American landmarks.

Final Challenge
Label a map with all the continents that your team has visited.