Games and Icebreakers Resource
Submitted by Yvonne Cullivan on Fri, 13 Mar 09
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At a recent meeting with artists on Helium's new Arts in Health Puppet Portals Project, artists expressed an interest in skills sharing. One of the areas they mentioned was sharing games and icebreaker or team-building exercises with groups of children / young people. I suggested that the Practice.ie Forum would be a good space for artists to add games etc. If you have any, please share them here, so we can build a resource for everyone!
One example for team-building would be:
- Divide the group into smaller groups.
- Ask each group to choose a word with the same amount of letters as there are people in the group.
- When they have chosen a word, each person should try to use their body to create the shape of one letter in the word.
- They might have to sit or lie down or bend or stretch or stand on one leg e.t.c.
- When they have managed to form all the letters, each team should form the word and 'present' it to the other teams so that they can guess the word - it might take a while for people to realize which way they need to face in order for the other teams to read the word.
It's nothing particularly innovative! But it does get the people moving and stretching and working together. Its great to do outside if weather permits.
Seque to calming and focusing
* Depending on what you're leading into, and where you're coming from (in terms of the kids energy and focus levels)... if you need to get them to focus, you can have them sit down, close their eyes and trying imagining something. You can also make the room darker, not too dark to be 'exciting' but dimmer by pulling shades if possible.
We did something like this to prepare for a drawing activity. We all sat in a circle, eyes closed, and imagined being under water. Asked kids to imagine what it was like, cold, dark. Then we imagined what it sounds like. Then we started making some of the sounds.
It was a good lead into a quiet drawing activity from bringing the kids in and having very high energy.
* Another thing is- if the crowd is VERY LOUD - a good way to get their attention is to talk rather more quietly, or whisper. Rather than trying to compete with them, this gets them wondering what you're saying, and they even shush each other. This works very well with the little ones.
* To get people talking or responding one at a time, you can pass a ball to a kid, and they throw back to you.