Be Better Together Team Building, Personality Improvement and Language Learning Games Handbook
Created by Tamás Kriváchy & Ráhel Pálovics, “Teacher Tom & Teacher Ray” for AHHA Education while volunteering in Cambodia, 2015.
[email protected]
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Introduction Classroom games
Outdoor games
(pages 4-115)
(pages 116-198)
The games in this section of the book are quick games for smaller groups of people, aimed at improving language, social and personality skills.
The so-called “Outdoor games” are not all outdoor games – many of them can be played indoors as well. These activities require more preparation, more time and more mature participants. They give a larger and more memorable experience to those who play.
Besides being fun, playing games together is an important tool in education. It is a motivating and effective way of learning.
The focus of the outdoor games is not on language skills, but on team building and personality improvement. Participants will have to work together in serious situations and solve difficult tasks, while they practice teamwork and communication. Other games make the participants think about their set of values and what is important for them as human beings.
Games strengthen the connections between the classmates themselves and between the class and the teacher. This gives the group a “team” feeling that drives them together in learning. Many of the games in this section of the book are language learning games. These games are designed to practice and deepen our knowledge. The exciting situation of a game makes the mind more active and more motivated to remember things. By playing games in English, we are not just practicing the language, but we are using it in a real situation.
In general it is advised to use these activities and games if we want to build a strong team and/or give the participants unforgettable experiences.
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Classroom Games
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Classroom games How to use this part of the book? In this part of the book we give you a set of games. These games are not good in themselves – how you and your group play them will make them good activities and experiences. Yes, the key to a good game is how it is played. As a teacher or group coordinator it is your job to make sure these games are played in the correct environment. You need to be motivated, enthusiastic and excited to bring out the most of the games! You should also manage your group wisely during the activities, for example it is advised to mix your students so that not always the same groups of friends stay together. In learning games it is especially important to mix the stronger students and the weaker ones – this gives both sides good opportunities to improve. You need to know your group to be able to choose the correct game at the correct time. We want to aid you in making this choice so we introduced three maturity and three English levels for the games. Apart from this we indicated the games we think are especially good for Language learning and Team building with the
and
Basic English or better
Intermediate English or better
Good even for beginner English groups who are learning their first few words and structures.
Advised for student who can make complete sentences individually and are able to communicate with each other. 5
signs.
Advanced English Only for groups where everyone can express their own ideas confidently. They can use English in difficult situations spontaneously.
Maturity 1 or higher
Maturity 2 or higher
These games can even be played with children. They are simple games with simple rules.
Participants need a higher level of selfcontrol and patience. These games are mainly for young adolescent groups.
Maturity 3 Requires people who can be serious when needed. The games are challenging and require a high level of self-control and consciousness.
For practical purposes each game is suited with icons to help plan:
number of participants
estimated time
necessary equipment
All games have an extensive description, but many games also have an explanation video to help understand how the game works. The links to these videos can be found right before the description of the game. For each game we also highlighted the AHHA skills that we think to be most relevant. This can be found right under the game’s title. These skills are Aura, Belief, Calmness, Discipline, Education, Fairness, Growth, Happiness, Humility. Detailed explanation of these skills can be found on AHHA Education’s website.
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A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The “main” AHHA skill of the game is larger. The book is organized based on the dominant AHHA skill of the games. This way the book can also be easily used to pass on morals and insight to students. The book starts with “Aura games” and finishes with “Humility games”. At the end of each game we also share our ideas regarding the moral of the game, in other words what we think we can learn from it. This must not be shared directly with the students, but it can be a good base for the teacher to bring the most out of the given game and can also help in discussion with the students about the game. We did our best to collect these great activities and games. Please use them creatively and with great joy. In case of questions or comments, please contact us at
[email protected].
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Table of contents – Classroom Games
1, 7, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 33, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 54
2, 24, 25
8, 9, 19, 22, 23, 34, 35, 39, 50, 51, 52
3, 4, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 36, 40
5, 32
10, 11, 53
37
6, 12
Language learning games are in red. The table shows the games’ numbers (and not the page to find them). The pages to find them are on the next page.
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28. Crazy family .......................... 63 29. Draw and describe ............... 65 30. Game of categories .............. 67 31. Intense activity ..................... 70 32. Detective game .................... 73 33. Three at a time ..................... 76 34. House, tree, dog ................... 77 35. Mirror game ......................... 79 36. Things in common ................ 81 37. Where do I belong? .............. 83 38. Ching Chang Chung .............. 85 39. Cheering rock-paperscissors ....................................... 87 40. Our story .............................. 89 41. Shout the message! ............. 91 42. Bee tag ................................. 92 43. Don’t touch! ......................... 94 44. Fishermen’s tag .................... 95 45. Freeze tag ............................. 97 46. Monkey see, monkey do tag .............................................. 98 47. Red light, green light .......... 100 48. Smack the shoulder............ 102 49. Star tag ............................... 104 50. Bzzzzz! ................................ 106 51. Magnetic people ................ 108 52. Pony ................................... 110 53. Winking killer ..................... 112 54. Secret leader ...................... 114
Table of contents – Classroom Games .......................................... 8 1. This is a beautiful rainbow ..... 10 2. New connections ................... 12 3. Any questions?....................... 14 4. Who am I? .............................. 16 5. Hello? ..................................... 18 6. I say it, I show it ..................... 19 7. AHHA spirit............................. 22 8. My tree .................................. 24 9. Open doors ............................ 26 10. I believe in myself and I hope you do as well ................... 28 11. Support each other .............. 30 12. Stop! .................................... 32 13. Count to 20 .......................... 34 14. Narrow gate ......................... 35 15. Secret exchange ................... 36 16. The winking game ................ 38 17. Slapping round ..................... 40 18. This is my seat ...................... 42 19. Have a seat, please! ............. 44 20. Knowledge is power............. 47 21. Word duel ............................ 49 22. Activity ................................. 51 23. Special seats......................... 53 24. Rumors................................. 55 25. Who? Did what? .................. 57 26. 20 questions ........................ 59 27. Blind painter ........................ 61
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1. This is a beautiful rainbow
A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The students have to draw a beautiful rainbow. They have to figure out what makes a rainbow beautiful.
2-20
5-20 min
none
https://youtu.be/5vidfaAgbr0 Description The goal of this game is to teach people to say “thank you” more often. The teacher will first show the children what a beautiful rainbow looks like. He/she uses an imaginary pen to draw an arc in the air (like the shape of a rainbow). He/she then says: “This is a beautiful rainbow.” Next, he/she gives the imaginary pen to one of the students and says “Here you go.” The student should also try to draw a beautiful rainbow. After the student draws something and says “This is a beautiful rainbow”, or asks the teacher whether the rainbow is beautiful or not, the teacher has to say “That is/is not a beautiful rainbow.” The student has to give the pen to someone else or to the teacher. The goal of the students is to find out what makes a rainbow beautiful. The rainbow is ONLY beautiful IF the student said “thank you” when he/she took the imaginary pen from the teacher. The students, of course do not know this in the beginning, and they have to try to find out what makes a rainbow beautiful. So they will keep trying and trying 10
but the teacher must always tell them that the rainbow is not beautiful (if they did not say thank you). If a student says thank you when taking the imaginary pen, the teacher will tell him/her that their rainbow is beautiful, but the teacher must not tell them the rule! The students have to find out the rule for themselves. The game is never really over – the students will slowly find out what makes a rainbow beautiful, but the game can continue the next day if some students did not find out what the rule was. Of course after a long time, the teacher can tell them the rule if they already tried a lot. Moral A – Aura is the key in this game: people must learn to be polite and be thankful. If someone is nice and polite, his/her aura is much better and people will like to interact with them more, and will be friendlier to him/her. Saying thank you is important! Ha – This game can be very funny, because people try in many different ways to make a beautiful rainbow. Once a person finds out the secret, he/she is very happy, and can also show others that he/she can make a beautiful rainbow and can play with them.
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2. New connections
A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu Everyone stands in a circle and we ask questions from each other and create a huge web.
5-25
15-20 min
string rolled on a stick
Description The whole group stands in a large circle. The teacher takes the stick (with some string on it) and throws it to one person while he/she holds on to the end of the string. The teacher asks that person one question. That person answers, and then takes the stick and throws it to another person and asks a question. Everybody who receives the stick has to hold on to the string. In this way a web will form (see picture). The teacher should ask the students to only throw the stick to a person that hasn’t received it before. By the end there will be a web that connects everyone in the group. At this point the goal will be to roll up the string again. The last person throws the stick back to the person who he/she received it from. Again the thrower asks a question, and the catcher has to answer. They continue like this until the whole string is rolled up again onto the stick. 12
The game can be used to get to know each other better, but also to practice making questions, or questions in a given topic in English. Moral A – We have good aura if we are interested in others in a kind way and we ask questions to get to know them better. We can practice this in this game. G – When we get to know more people we grow, and especially our connections grow. Also when the members of a team get to know each other, the team grows and gets better and stronger, and can be more efficient!
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3. Any questions?
A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu One person walks along a line slowly, while the other people in the group can ask questions from him/her.
5-20
30-90 min
none
http://youtu.be/NwRigBouQOY Description In this game the members of a group or team have the opportunity to get to know each other more deeply or they can just practice asking questions. First, the teacher asks one person to come to the front of the class. The teacher draws (or shows) a path that that person has to follow. The path (or line) should be about 3-6 meters long; it can be for example from one side of the classroom to the other side, a bamboo stick, etc. The person in front of the class/group has to walk slowly on the path. While he/she is walking, the rest of the group can ask any question from the walking person. If the walking person receives a question, he/she stops where he/she is and answers the question. After answering the question, he/she continues to walk, and the group can ask new questions. This continues until the walking person reaches the end of the path/line. Important: the group can answer any question from the walking person, but the walking person does not have to answer all of 14
them if he/she doesn’t want to. He/she has two “No, thank you!” possibilities, that he/she can use when the others ask questions that he/she doesn’t want to answer. When the first person reaches the end of the path, another person is chosen to walk. If there is enough time, everyone in the group should walk once. Moral A – The most important skill in this game is Aura. The people in the group must feel how serious questions they want to ask from the walking person. It is important to understand that everyone has sensitive topics in their lives. Aura is also essential because in this game we become stronger friends with others. We realize that by asking a few questions, we can become much closer to other people. If we ask good questions from others in our everyday lives, we can make better friends. F – In this game the walking person is in the center role. He/she has to be fair and answer the questions honestly, and answer as many as possible. He/she must also walk in a fair pace. If he/she goes very quickly the others don’t have time to ask questions. If he/she is walking too slowly, he/she will be in the center of the game for too long, and the others will not have a chance to walk. Fairness is also important when asking questions! We should only ask nice questions, questions that we would also be happy to answer.
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4. Who am I?
A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu Everybody has a name on his/her forehead, but we don’t know what is written on it. We have to ask yes-no questions from the others to discover who we are.
5-40
10-20 min
small sticky papers with names on them
Description Everyone has a piece of paper on their foreheads. There is a name on it but we don’t know our own names, we can only see the others’ names. The goal of the players is to discover their own name by asking yes-no questions from others. (e.g.: Am I an actor? Am I from Cambodia? etc.) We can ask only one question from one person, and then we have to move and ask others. If someone discovers his/her own name he/she goes to the teacher to asks if he/she was correct. If yes, he/she can stay next to the teacher. If no, he/she continues the game. When everybody discovered their names, the game is over. We can play the game with recently learnt words or with people from the class, etc. Moral A – Helping each other and the ability of asking others for help are very important skills in our lives. If these skills make part of our aura, if they are natural for us, our lives will be much easier. Also, knowing 16
ourselves and always discovering more and more about ourselves is very important. We should always try to get to know ourselves more. D – Discipline is very important in this game. It would be so much easier to cheat: to look at our name or ask someone what our name is. But if we follow the rule of the game instead of our instincts, we can discover the name on the correct way and it will give us more happiness, more feeling of success, it will be a positive experience.
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5. Hello?
A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The students make imaginary phone calls remembering nice moments. The others have to figure out to whom the phone call is addressed.
5-20
5-15 min
none
https://youtu.be/I2KstAdHdjE Description 1. One student starts the game. He/she has to pick up an imaginary phone and “call someone”. He/she says: “Do you remember……?” (E.g. “Do you remember that last week when I was cooking, you came and helped me? We had such a great time!” 2. When someone understands that the calling person is talking to him/her, he/she has to pick up the other imaginary phone, and say “Hello? Yes, I remember!” 3. He/she can start the next phone call. Moral A – This game is about remembering and talking about nice memories with other people. It helps to build our relationships. We can build a positive personality, a positive aura if we strengthen our relationships, if we are nice and friendly to others. Remembering the nice moments, saying thank you to others develops our aura. Sometimes it is difficult to find a nice memory with every other person, but if we practice it and we practice also how to say thank you, it helps our relationships and our aura a lot. 18
6. I say it, I show it
A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The chosen students tell, and then act the original story, so it changes (and gets shorter and shorter). The others are the audience, and they can follow the transformation of the story from the beginning.
6 + audience
20-40 min
original stories on one paper
https://youtu.be/_V1zhhal5us Description The teacher chooses the 6 active players, and then explains the rules. Then the 6 active players have to go to a different place (they have to go to a place where they can’t hear the others, for example to a different classroom). The teacher and the audience sit down in front of the “stage”. The teacher will ask the players to come in one by one. (In every round, one more player will come in.) The rounds of the game: -
-
-
Round 1: (Player 1 comes in) The teacher reads the original story to player 1 in front of the audience one or two times. Player 1 has to try to remember the story as much as he/she can. Round 2: (Player 2 comes in) Player 1 has to act the original story on the stage without saying a word. He/she can use sounds, but no words. He/she acts the story only one time! Player 2 has to try to remember the story as much as he/she can. Round 3: (Player 3 comes in) Player 2 has to 19
-
-
-
-
tell everything that he/she can remember of the story he/she just saw, only one time! Player 3 has to try to remember the story as much as he/she can. Round 4: (Player 4 comes in) Player 3 has to act everything that he/she can remember of the story he/she just heard. Player 4 has to try to remember the story as much as he/she can. Round 5: (Player 5 comes in) Player 4 has to tell everything that he/she can remember of the story he/she just saw. Player 5 has to try to remember the story as much as he/she can. Round 6: (Player 6 comes in) Player 5 has to act everything that he/she can remember of the story he/she just heard. Player 6 has to try to remember the story as much as he/she can. Round 7: Player 6 has to tell the audience everything that he/she can remember of the story he/she just saw. Then the teacher reads the original story to see how different it is from the one that we got from player 6.
The original story should not be too long, but it has to be something funny, weird or unexpected. Here is an example, but the teacher can make up any other stories, especially with recently learnt words, phrases, system words. “Once upon a time, there was a giraffe who lived in a swimming pool. He danced and sang all day long, because it was Khmer New Year. At the end of the day, he ate a huge ice cream then he went to sleep in the freezer. In the morning he went to the river by bike. He drank from the river and became a pink frog.” Moral A – This game teaches us mostly about the importance of our aura. It is not enough to know something, we need to be able to tell and show it to others in the best way we can, so that they too can understand and enjoy it. We can also understand from this game something about rumors: from person to person, the original information changes, several parts get lost, just as in real life. If we hear something bad 20
about others, we should check that information and not believe it without thinking and pass it on. B – When participating in an acting game, we risk our comfort; we can be shy or scared: what will others think about us? But if we take the risk and we believe in ourselves, we can contribute to the game and break free from our fears. Sometimes it is not easy but if we get used to it, we can forget our shyness and fears and become confident people.
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7. AHHA spirit A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu After the little song, the person running in the middle of the circle will shout at someone. This person will shout back as loud as he/she can.
8-30
10 min
none
http://youtu.be/Swcwnatm2rs Description First, we need to learn a little song. Here are the lyrics, and you can learn the melody from the video: “There is an AHHA spirit right in my heart, right in my heart, right in my heart. There is an AHHA spirit right in my heart and I want to shout it out.” After we have learnt the song, the game can start: 1. We all stand in a circle; one person stands in the middle. 2. We sing the song together. Person 1, in the middle, has to run around in a funny way. The others also have to move in a funny way during the song (watch the video to understand). 3. When the song is over, Person 1 stands in front of one person from the circle: Person 2. Person 1 shouts at him/her as loud as he/she can. Person 2 also shouts, he/she gives back the shout. 22
4. We start the song again and Person 2 runs behind Person 1 in the middle. 5. When we finish the song, they will arrive to Person 3. Person 2 shouts at Person 1. Person 1 passes on the shout to Person 3. He/she gives it back to Person 1, who passes it on to Person 2. 6. We continue the song several times. Every time it ends, the last person of the runners starts the shouting, and it arrives back to him/her. Moral B – Shouting as loud as we can in front of everybody is not that easy for the first time, but if we can break the shyness and try it, we can become more confident. We just need to believe in ourselves and not to care about what others will think about us. In real life, when we know that we are right, we don’t need to be scared of others’ opinions. If we do the right thing, there is nothing we should worry about. Shouting also helps deal with our tensions, frustrations, stress; it feels good and frees us. The little song also has this positive message: if we know how to become a full person (“AHHA spirit”), we have to help others to understand the science of life (“shout it out”). Ha – The positive message, the funny movements and the shouting all give us happiness and help us not to worry about anything. When we play we can feel free of our problems, and enjoy the moment and enjoy being with friends.
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8. My tree A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The students lead their blindfolded partner to a tree. The partner can touch it. When he/she has been lead back, he/she has to find which tree was his/hers.
2 or more (even number)
10-20 min
a place with trees, cloths to blindfold half of the people
Description 1. Everyone chooses a partner. 2. One of the students blindfolds the other in every pair. 3. The student who can see leads his/her blindfolded partner to a tree. He/she has to pay attention to his/her partner, leading him/her carefully. They should go on a way that is difficult to remember. 4. When they arrive to a tree, he/she says to the blindfolded partner: “This is my tree”. The blindfolded person can touch it and try to feel what the tree is like. 5. Then the person who can see leads the blindfolded partner back to the original place (on a way that is difficult to remember) and takes off the scarf/cloth. 6. The originally blindfolded person has to try to find the tree. 7. The students change roles, and experience the same game from the side of their partners. 24
Moral B – In this game we can experience how to believe in others, how to trust them. When we are blindfolded we need the help of someone else. If we don’t trust our partner, if we don’t believe that he/she will take care of us, we won’t follow him/her, and the game won’t work. We can’t do everything by ourselves; we have to trust others also. D – We need to be very disciplined in both roles, but especially in the role of the person who leads the blindfolded partner. If he/she doesn’t pay attention to the partner, the partner will feel scared, he/she will feel him/herself in danger, he/she can even get hurt. So it is very important to focus and to lead the partner carefully.
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9. Open doors A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The group forms a long row, and one person runs down the middle while others raise their hands just in time.
10-40
20 min
none
https://youtu.be/ks2YD3bvgS8 Description The group forms 2 rows facing each other, standing close to each other, so that their fingers almost touch if they raise their arms in front of them. The teacher explains the rules that one person will run as fast as possible through the middle of the row, and the people in the row have to raise their hands just before the running person gets there. After that another person will run, and the row will be waiting for him/her with raised hands. The teacher should be the first running person, so the class can see how to do it. Make sure that the running person has enough space before the row and after the row, so that he/she can speed up to maximum speed, and can stop at the end. After the rules are explained and demonstrated, everyone tries running one by one. 26
Important: the running person should run with a straight body and with open eyes! They shouldn’t be afraid! Moral B –This game is mostly a trust game, in other words we must believe in others. The running person has to have lots of trust to run through the row, and believe that the group’s other members will raise their hands in time. Belief in self is also important, because the running person needs a lot of confidence to be able to run at full speed through the row of arms! D – Discipline is necessary for the row members so that they raise their arms right in time. It is also important for the running person to be able to keep his/her eyes open and body straight while running. F – As in many games, fairness is also important here. The people in the row must do their best to raise their hands at the right time, so the running person gets the best possible experience. If everyone is fair then everyone will have a good experience.
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10. I believe in myself and I hope you do as well A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The group passes on movements that a leader thinks of while everyone sings (chants) a song.
5-20
10-20 min
none
https://youtu.be/NKrLhyiNiJ0 Description We all stand in a circle. The teacher chooses one leader (this can be the teacher in the first round). The group starts singing: “I believe in myself and I hope you do as well!” Everyone has to clap on their legs while singing. We repeat the song again and again. The leader thinks of a movement and does it during the second half of the song (while they sing “hope you do as well”). The next time they sing it the two people standing next to the leader have to do what the leader did during the second half of the song. The leader, however, has to think of something new. The third time they sing the song, the movements are passed on to the next neighbors, and the first neighbors do what the leader did during the second singing, and the leader thinks of something new. The easiest way to understand the game is to watch the video about it. 28
Moral B – This game tries to improve confidence and belief in self. When we have to do funny movements in front of other people it improves our confidence. We are also singing “I believe in myself …” which helps us feel more confident. D – This game requires a lot of concentration and focus. We need to have the discipline to pay attention to the person who we need to pay attention to. By the end, everyone will be doing different movements, but we must focus on what we have to do. F – We need to understand our role in this game. We are fair with others if we do our part and focus properly. We ruin the game for the others if we are lazy and don’t pay attention.
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11. Support each other A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The group forms a small circle, and one person is inside the circle, blindfolded. The others push him/her around gently and make sure that he/she doesn’t fall.
7-10
10-20 min
a blindfold
https://youtu.be/aG39rU-NKKM Description Note: The easiest way to understand the rules of this game is to watch the video. The group chooses one person, who will be in the middle of the circle. The rest of the group forms a small, tight circle (their shoulders touch each other). If there are too many people then make smaller groups of about 7-10 people (there should be one 6-9 people in a circle and one chosen person in each smaller group). In each small circle the person in the middle is blindfolded. He/she has to stand straight, and tighten all the muscles in his/her body, so that he/she is stiff like a strong stick. He/she has to let the others push him/her around. The others must softly push the person in the middle from one side to the other, and make sure he/she does not fall. They must work together and help each other in keeping the person safe. 30
If the people in the circle can safely control the person in the middle, then they should slowly let the middle person fall lower and lower, but always still catch him/her! After a while people change roles: a new person comes to the middle and the previous one stands in the circle. Moral B – This game is about trust and belief in others. The person in the middle has to completely trust the people in the circle, or else he/she will become unstable and fall. The people in the circle must be confident in catching and pushing the person in the middle. They need to believe in themselves. So this game is all about trust, and that is very important when you are in a team: to know that you can trust others! D – Discipline is key for the person in the middle and for the people in the circle as well. The person in the middle has to keep his/her body straight at all times, even when he/she feels like he/she is falling. If he/she does not keep straight, then the others can’t catch him/her properly, and the game won’t work, he/she will fall. Of course discipline is also critical for the people in the circle: they have the responsibility to always stand in their places and catch the falling person and push him/her back. If they do not do their part, the person in the middle will fall. F – It is important to understand that we have to support others when they need support – our friends, team or family may need support. If we support and help others, they will support and help us when we need it.
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12. Stop! A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu There are two people on stage acting a situation. When someone from the audience says “Stop!” he/she replaces one of the acting people and starts a new situation.
6-30
20-40 min https://youtu.be/g9CJvsce2-M
Description 1. There are two people on stage. They act a situation in front of the audience. (E.g. one person is the mother, and she is helping her small child to learn how to eat. The other person acts as the small child.) 2. Whenever someone from the audience says “Stop!” the actors have to stop, and stay still like sculptures, they shouldn’t move at all. The person who said “Stop!” goes on stage and replaces one of the two sculptures. He/she takes the exact place and position of one of them (the replaced person goes to the audience). 32
none
3. The new person on stage starts to act a new, completely different situation from the old position. (E.g. they are both young girls in the cinema, or any other situation.) 4. The new situation continues until someone else says “Stop!” again and so on and so on. Moral B – When we play this game, and when we say “stop!” and participate actively in the acting, we break free from our fears, our shyness. We don’t think about what the others will think about us; instead we contribute to the game, to the happiness of the community. If everybody wants to only be audience and nobody participates then the game doesn’t work and nobody enjoys it. So we have to break our shyness and we have to break free from being scared. By believing in ourselves, we will hear and see others’ happiness. This way, we will be more confident, and we will make others and ourselves happier. A – It is also about aura: acting and making others feel good develops our personality. If we can participate in an activity, if we can contribute to a game we will feel that it is good to be a member of the group. Sometimes, we need to act for others, sometimes they will act to make us laugh. Acting in a friendly, nice and funny way can help us become friendlier, nicer and funnier. Ha – Every game gives us happiness. But in this game, happiness and making others laugh and is one of the goals. When we start new, funny situations, we give happiness to ourselves and to the community.
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13. Count to 20 A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The group has to count to 20, but only one person can say a number at a time.
4–20
5-15 min
none
https://youtu.be/XT-48uS-JeY Description The group has to count to 20. Anyone can say any number, but there is one rule: if two (or more) people say the same number at the same time, then the group has to start from 1 again. This way no one knows who is going to say which number. The people in the group have to learn to pay attention to each other. Moral C – Calmness is important for this game. The task is simple, but we need to stay calm to be able to win. There will be many situations where we are very close to winning but something goes wrong. In these cases we must keep calm and carry on with the game. F – Fairness is very important when playing this. We need to understand that everyone wants to play, so we shouldn’t be the only ones to say numbers. We should always give others a chance also. If everyone thinks “I will say the next number”, then the game will not work, the team will never win! 34
14. Narrow gate A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu Everybody has to go through a narrow gate. The gate is protected by a blind monster.
5–40
10-20 min
a “gate” and a blindfold
https://youtu.be/uSwgt4Lnqd4 Description The teacher chooses the monster who will protect the gate. We blindfold the monster and he/she stands in the gate. The others have to go through the gate. The monster tries to catch them, so they need to move very silently. If the monster catches someone, that person will be the monster in the next round. Moral C – In this game the students can practice calmness. They have to act silently and calmly. If they just run without thinking the monster will catch them. So they need to think before acting, they need a strategy. D – This is also a discipline game for every player. First of all, it is difficult for the monster to not to take off the scarf. But it is also difficult to be quiet and silent for the other players. They all have to act in a disciplined way. 35
15. Secret exchange A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu One person is blindfolded in the middle of the circle. He/she calls two “names” from the circle. These two people have to change places while the blindfolded person tries to catch them.
8–20
10-15 min
a blindfold
https://youtu.be/hpCa-mmNzzY Description Everybody stands/sits in a circle (sitting is better, but if we don’t have enough chairs to from a circle, we can play the game standing also). 1. Everyone chooses a name for themselves, or the teacher gives a name to everyone. The names should be recently learnt words. For example if the class has just learnt the topic of food, the names can be ingredients: beef, cucumber, salt, oil, etc. Everyone has to remember the names, so we can ask them all to say their names loudly, and maybe the class can repeat the names. We can repeat this 1 or 2 times to remember the names. If we don’t want to play with recently learnt words then we can use
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numbers, and those are easy to remember (e.g. numbers 1-14 if 14 people are playing). 2. One person stands in the middle, blindfolded (he/she has a name too). When the game starts, he/she has to call two names, he/she says for example: “salt and beef”. The people named salt and beef raise their hands so that they can see each other. They have to change places as silently as they can, because the blindfolded person in the middle tries to catch them. 3. If he/she can catch someone, that person stays in the middle for the next round. If not, he/she stays in the middle. 4. If the two people have changed places, everybody claps their hands so that the blindfolded person knows that he/she can call two new names. Moral C – In this game, the children can learn how to move quietly, they can practice to be calm, but fast. Everybody in the circle needs to be quiet to play the game. Even though they get excited, they won’t be able to change places in secret if they are loud. D – If everybody can act in a disciplined way, this game will be very enjoyable and useful for learning, practicing. But the teacher needs to make the students understand that they have to act quietly, and they can’t disturb the blindfolded person or stop the others from changing places. If they can’t learn to play games in a disciplined way, they won’t be able to profit from the game and they will stop the others from learning and enjoying themselves.
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16. The winking game A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The group stands in a circle in pairs. The person in front has to run to the person who winked at him/her, and the person behind has to catch the runner.
13–25
10-20 min
none
https://youtu.be/pPwolKf56hg Description The people playing make pairs. There should be one person who doesn’t have a pair. The pairs stand in a circle so that one of the people in each pair stand in an inner circle, and the others stand in an outer circle. The person without a pair also stand in the circle, in the inner circle. The person without a pair wants to get a pair for him/herself. He/she can do this by winking at someone in the inner circle. If he/she winks at someone, that person has to run to him/her. However, the person standing behind the running person wants to stop the runner by touching him/her. If the person behind can catch the runner, then the runner has to come back and they change places. The winking person will wink at people in the inner circle until someone 38
is able to run to him/her. If someone is successful, then there will be a new person without a pair: he/she will be the new winking person. Important: the people standing in the outer circle (= the people who try to catch their pair if their pair tries to run) can only look at their pair’s feet! They don’t know if their pair was winked at or not until they see that their pair is running! Moral C – In this game we can act without thinking, but that will not help us. If someone winks at us, then we have to be calm. If we just start moving without thinking then the person behind us will catch us. The catching person also has to be calm, because he/she might try to catch the first person at even the slightest movements, even when he/she was not trying to run! If the catching person is not calm, he/she will be crazy by the end of the game. D – Discipline is needed to stand still and not move if you are a runner. The catcher also needs discipline to always look at the feet of their pair and not to look elsewhere. Ha – Happiness is present in many games, but here we are in a very tense situation, and if we catch someone or if we manage or fail to run away, it can be very funny. This kind of building up of tension and then releasing it is a way to experience happiness in our everyday life.
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17. Slapping round A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu Everyone places their hands on the table. The “slap” has to be passed on. If someone messes up, he/she is out of the game.
5–25
5–15 min
a table
https://youtu.be/WBg_3Es2b9o Description Everyone should sit at a table. We all place our hands in front of us on the table, but we must cross our neighbors’ hands! Please look at the picture to understand this. The teacher starts the game by slapping the table with one of his/her hands. The “slap” is then passed on to the hand to the right of the teacher’s hand. The next hand also has to slap, and so on and so on. This way the slap travels around the table in one direction. If this is going well enough for the group, then the teacher explains the next rule: if someone slaps two times quickly instead of one time, then the direction of the circle changes. For example if the direction was to the right, and someone double slaps, then it will change to the left, so the previous person has to slap again (only once!). See the video for a clear illustration. If everyone understands the rules well, then the teacher can introduce the 40
final rule: if someone makes a mistake, then the hand that he/she made the mistake with, will fall out of the game. For example if someone slaps when they shouldn’t, their hand falls out. Or if someone doesn’t slap quick enough because he/she wasn’t paying attention, then his/her hand will fall out. The last person with a hand in the game wins. Moral D – This game is a good practice of discipline. We need to focus throughout the whole game and discipline our hands. We must act when we need to, not when we feel like it. It is a good practice of paying attention and thinking. A – Good aura is important for a good game. We need to feel what it is like to be a good player. For example if someone always double slaps, then the game will be boring for some people on the other side who never have the chance to slap. Also, if we never double slap, then the game will be boring. Everyone must find a good balance for how many times they should double slap.
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18. This is my seat A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The group sits in a circle and there is one empty place whose owner must be declared!
7–30
10–20 min
as many chairs as there are people
https://youtu.be/Aciy34P2WOM Description The group sits in a circle. One person stands in the middle. His/her job is to sit down on an empty chair. The others can stop him/her in doing this by being quick enough. The person to the left of the empty seat has to put his/her (right) hand on the seat and say “This is my seat!” After doing so, he/she sits on the new seat. Now his/her old chair will be free. The next person also has to do what the first person did: put his/her hand on the chair, say “This is my seat!” and sit on the empty chair. Now his/her old chair will be free. The THIRD person has to put his/her hand on the empty chair and say “This is
’s seat!” where he/she says the name of someone instead of . The person who he/she says has to run there and sit down. For example he/she says “This is John’s seat!” John will run there and sit down. Now John’s old seat will be empty. The game starts again: two people will sit on the empty seat next to them, and the third person has to call someone else. 42
If the person in the middle can sit down somewhere (on a seat where no one has called a name yet), then the person who was slow to call will go in the middle. Moral D – We need discipline to be able to focus and know when to say what! Ha – This game is mainly about enjoying ourselves as a group. We can also practice the names of those people that we don’t know yet, so it is very good with new groups.
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19. Have a seat, please! A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu Everyone in the group is sitting, and they try to stop a “Walker” from taking a seat by taking it themselves.
5–30
15–45 min
as many chairs as there are people
https://youtu.be/PSCTW4D0LL0 Description We randomly distribute as many chairs as there are participants. The distance between the chairs should be around 2-3 steps. Everybody takes a seat, and one player is chosen: he/she will be the Walker. The teacher explains the rules of the game. 1. The Walker’s goal is to sit down in an empty chair. 2. The Walker is not allowed to run or walk quickly, he/she must walk at a normal speed (the teacher can demonstrate the speed). 3. The goal of the others is to stop the Walker from sitting down. 4. The ONLY way to stop the Walker from sitting down is by sitting in the empty chair (instead of him/her). 5. Everyone who is not the Walker can run. 44
When the teacher says: “Have a seat, please!” the Walker starts walking from one of the corners towards the empty chair. Someone will run to the empty chair to take the place before the Walker gets there. This way there is a new empty chair, so the Walker will change direction. Again, someone else will take the empty place and so on and so on. The game continues until the Walker is able to take a seat. Then we chose a new walker and the game starts over. Optional changes to the game After the group has been playing for a while and more people have had the chance to be the Walker, we can add new rules to make the game more interesting. First, we can choose a leader who stands in the middle and says the name of the person who he/she wants to run to the empty seat. (We take his/her chair out of the game.)The others must stay in their places until their name is said. This way the sitting team can be much more organized. If the Walker can sit down and wins, we choose a new leader. After a while, when more people tried the role of the leader, the teacher can propose to not have a leader anymore but to have a general rule instead. Now, the group has to think of a good rule that says who has to run to the empty chair (e.g.: always the nearest people have to run to the empty chair, or the people sitting in the middle have to run, or only 3 people are allowed to run, etc.). If the students can’t find a rule or a good rule, then the teacher should help them. For example a good rule is: always the person farthest from the empty chair has to run. This way the group can work effectively without a leader. When the game is over, the teacher asks the students to share their experiences. What was difficult? Did adding a leader help? Did using a rule help? Is it important for everyone to follow the rule? 45
Moral D – Discipline is important for the Walker and for the sitting people as well. The Walker must control his/her speed, even though his/her instinct would be to run for the empty chair. Many times the sitting people also have the instinct to run to the empty chair, but they must first think: “Is this good for the team?” Everyone has to learn when it is his/her time to do something, and when it is his/her time to NOT do something. If a rule was used in the game, it is good to see that everyone must follow that rule, otherwise the team can’t work effectively. This is similar to a society, where EVERYONE has to follow the law. A – Aura is very important for the leader (if there was one), and for the sitting people as well. It is important for the leader to not be angry and scold the team members. A leader (or teacher) has to be kind and caring about his/her team (or class). The leader also has great responsibility: he/she must make sure the Walker does not sit down. The sitting people also have to have good aura, especially when there is no leader. They must not scold their teammates when they make bad decisions. They must give advice in a friendly way and give positive criticism. They must also realize that they have a part to play in the team. In the game at first people sitting close to the empty chair feel involved, and feel that they need to act. People sitting far from the empty chair feel it is not their job to help now, since it is far. However, later in the game it becomes clear that the people sitting close to the empty chair must not move, and it is actually the people who are sitting far that have the responsibility to act. C – Calmness is important for everyone in the game. It is difficult for everyone to act against their first brain and their instincts. Because of this it can happen that people become angry and stressed. Instead they should stay calm and continue to act rationally and listen to their second brain. Hu – Humility is important when following a leader or when following the rule. The students must understand that not always their desire or instincts go first, and sometimes they have to listen to others and obey the rules as well. 46
20. Knowledge is power A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The students try to figure out the others’ names. They make others support them if they know their names.
8–30
20-30 min
none
https://youtu.be/LV6lqv9mVg8 Description 1. Everybody has to choose a secret name for him/herself. The name should be an English word. The teacher can ask them to choose a recently learnt word, but it can be random also. They don’t tell anyone this secret name, only the teacher, who writes it down in his/her notebook. So the teacher writes down all the names. 2. The teacher divides the students into two groups. They stand in two lines facing each other. 3. Then, the teacher reads all the names in a random order two times. Everybody hears every name, but they don’t know whose names they are. They have to remember as many names as they can. 4. The teacher chooses one person who starts. He/she can guess someone’s name from the other group. E.g. “Sokha, are you strawberry?” That person has to answer the question: 47
-
“No, I am not strawberry.” - In this case, he/she can ask another person from the other group (e.g. “Kim, are you movie?”). - “Yes, I am strawberry!” – In this case, the person whose name is strawberry has to stand behind the person who figured out his/her name. He/she becomes the supporter of that person. The person who guessed right can guess again. 5. When someone figures out the name of a person who has supporters, he/she has to say the supporters’ names also to make them his/her supporters. The goal of the players is to make everybody from the other team become supporters of their team. So the game is over when all the people are standing on one side. Like this, the knowledge of the others’ names is the power. Moral E – In this game, knowledge and education are the source of the power: the student can win the game if he/she has the ability to remember the words, and to use them. Of course he/she needs some luck too, but if he/she does his/her best remembering and using the words, it gives him/her a big chance to win. It is like learning English. Maybe speaking English doesn’t guarantee a good job, but our chances are much higher if we speak English well. G – The game can also show us something about growth. We can see that we always have to build more and more. In the game we have to make everyone our supporter. In real life we have to build our knowledge, personality and relationships to become a full person. We can never say that we are already perfect; we have to develop throughout our whole life. 48
21. Word duel A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu Two students have to quickly find the correct word in a table.
4–40
10-15 min
whiteboard with two markers
Description Before the game we draw a 3×3 table on the whiteboard and we write a recently learnt word in every square. We choose two students who stand facing the class (they shouldn’t see the words on the whiteboard). They have the markers in their hands. The class has to give a definition of one word on the whiteboard. For example if the word “sibling” is on the board, someone can say: “brother or sister”, or if we have “banana” on the board someone can say: “a yellow sweet fruit that the monkeys like very much”. When the two competing people have heard the definition, they can turn back and try to find the described word faster than the other. Whoever finds and crosses out the word faster gets one point. Then the class has 49
to give the next definition. The goal of the two competing people is to have more points than the other. We can play the game with more words, or we can also play with synonyms or opposites instead of definitions. With beginner groups we can also play by drawing pictures or numbers in the cells of the table. Someone from the class says a word or a number and they have to find that drawing or number. Moral E – The right application of our knowledge is the key for this game. We can practice the application of new words by describing their meaning or by trying to find the described word. It is not enough to only know a word; we also need to be able to use it fast and precisely.
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22. Activity A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu One person has to act, explain or draw a word. The others in his/her team have to find out what the word was.
4-12
20-60 min
paper or blackboard
https://youtu.be/wldingeuLNc Description The group forms teams (ideally 3 or 4 people in one team, there should be 2, 3 or 4 teams depending on how many people want to play). The teacher will give one word and a way to present it to the first person of the first team in secret (no one else can hear the word!). There are three ways to present: by acting, by speaking or by drawing. For example the teacher will say: “mango, acting”, or “travel, drawing”, or “time, speaking”, etc. The person has 1 minute to act/speak/draw while his/her group tries to find out what the original word was. During the one minute his/her team can guess as many times as they want. If they can find it out, that team gets one point. If they can’t find out in 1 minute, then the other teams can guess one time (ONLY one guess!). If the other team guesses correctly, they get the point. After the first person finishes, the next team chooses one player that will have to act/speak/draw a word. Important rules of showing the word: -
Acting: the person can’t make any sounds. Only actions and movements are allowed. The person can’t use any items or objects or other people in the area. For example if he/she has the word “spoon”, he/she can’t run to the kitchen 51
quickly and bring back a spoon and show it to the group. He/she can’t show letters or numbers either (the game would be too easy if he/she would spell the word with movements in the air). Speaking: the person can’t do any movements, for example he/she can’t use his/her hands to help explain the word. The person also can’t say the word he/she has to explain or any similar words. For example if the word is “water”, he/she can’t say “water” or “waterfall” or “rainwater”. On the other hand, saying “rain” is ok. -
Drawing: the person can’t write any letters or numbers.
The good thing about this game is that the teacher has to give the words. The teacher can use words or phrases that the group learned previously. Moral E – In this game the students have to work with recently learnt words which helps memorize them. The game also makes the students communicate better in English when they have to explain a word. They really have to use the words they learned in practice! A – Aura is very important when trying to explain things and when trying to understand things. When explaining difficult words in a difficult way, one has to remain friendly and calm while explaining, and can also try to be funny. If you are the person trying to guess the word, it is important how you act: if you just sit there passively and don’t take part in the game, and only guess 1 or 2 times, then your team doesn’t have a chance of winning. However, if you are active and try to guess many things, your team communication will be much better and you will enjoy the game much more and your team will win! 52
23. Special seats A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu There are two teams, whose goals are to get their team members to fill up the three seats. They do this by calling each other’s (current) names.
8-20
10-30 min
small pieces of paper
https://youtu.be/WE9oUQpC_OY Description The group forms two teams (team A and team B), and they all sit (or stand) in a large circle. In the circle the members of team A have to stand next to the members of team B (so it goes A, B, A, B, etc.). The teacher designates three spots in the circle that are the “special seats”. Of these three seats one should be empty, on the other there should be a team A, and on the third there should be a team B member. The goal of both teams is to have their team members sit on the special seats, i.e. team A should try to get three team A members on the three seats, team B should try to get three team B members on the seats. How to do this? Everyone playing will have a small piece of paper with their name on it. Always during the game, the person who is sitting/standing in the left side of the empty chair/spot has to say a name. Whoever has the paper with that name on 53
it goes to the empty seat/spot. The caller of the name and the person who had that name exchange their pieces of paper! This is very important. Since they exchange their papers, whenever someone calls one of them, the other will go. The game continues, and again the person who is on the left side of the empty chair/spot has to call a name. They change names again. During the game, the names will change more and more and it will become more difficult to know who you are calling. The game is over when there are three people from the same team on the special seats. Note: the game can also be played with newly learnt words so they practice the new words. Moral E – In this game there are two important things: paying attention and thinking. These are also the two important things in Education. We have to pay attention when learning new things, or else we will be confused later. We must also think for ourselves and apply our knowledge in the correct way later in life. C – In this game, we will quickly forget whose name is what if we lose our calmness. However, if we are able to stay calm, we can focus better than the other team, and we will remember who has which name more accurately. G – We have a very simple goal in this game: to get three of our teammates on the special seats. Although this may sound simple, the way there is difficult sometimes. Real growth is not only always becoming bigger and better – real growth is always trying to become better. Like in this game: sometimes we have 2 people on the special seats, sometimes only 1, but if we are strong in our growth we will always try to get more. This is similar in life, where we must not give up if at the moment we have less. If we keep trying to get more, we will grow to be better people.
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24. Rumors A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The group forms a circle, and a message goes around from person to person. In the end, the message is usually something very different.
6-20
15 min
none
Description Everyone sits in a circle. The teacher whispers a sentence to one person once! The person can’t ask for the teacher to repeat it. The person has to whisper what he/she heard (or what he/she thinks the sentence is) to the next person (only once! he/she is not allowed to repeat it). The next person has to whisper what he/she heard also to the following person, etc. The sentence will soon reach the last person in the circle. The last person has to stand up and say loudly what he/she heard. Next, the first person (or the teacher) has to stand up and say the original sentence out loud. In the next round one of the students can think of an original sentence and start the round. If the group is very large, two or more sentences can go after each other. The teacher should make sentences that use newly learnt word or phrases, or ask the students to think of sentences that use newly learnt structures. 55
Moral E – The key to this game is to be able to understand what others said, and to be able to pronounce it clearly to the next person. These are both very important when learning and speaking English. F – We can also understand from this game something about rumors: from person to person, the original information changes, several parts get lost, just as in real life. If we hear something bad about others, we should check that information and not believe it without thinking, and pass it over. Ha – We can play this game almost anywhere, anytime, if there are enough people. This way we can stay happy and have a good laugh almost any time!
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25. Who? Did what? A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu We write funny sentences together not knowing what the others added.
6-20
10-20 min
papers
Description Everyone has a piece of paper. They have to write down the following questions beneath each other (leaving enough space between them): -
Who? Did what? With whom? Where? When? Why?
When everybody has the questions on their paper, we can start the game. 1. Everybody answers the first question on their paper (e.g. Who? – A huge monkey). 2. Then we fold down the first part of the paper and we pass it to the next person. This way, the next person can’t see the first line. The teacher makes sure that everybody passed on their papers and got the new papers.
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3. Then we can answer the next question, not knowing what the first answer is (e.g. Did what? – bought some flowers). 4. Again, we fold down the previous line, and pass it to the next person. 5. We continue like this until all the questions have an answer. 6. Then, everybody opens up their paper, and they can read the funny sentences out loud to the class one by one (e.g. A huge monkey bought some flowers with Superman in Phnom Penh in the summer of 2013, because I love strawberries.) Depending on the English level of the class we can play with less or more questions, but we need to make sure that the order of the questions is correct to get correct sentences. Moral E – This game is an English practicing game. We need to put our knowledge into use to create funny new sentences. It is the same as all kinds of education. We get knowledge and we have to practice to get the ability to use our knowledge in real situations. The teacher can help students to create correct sentences by pointing out that they have to use past tense, etc. Ha – The funny sentences motivate the students. They don’t even think they are practicing English, or they are studying, because they can feel the happiness of the game. This way, happiness helps their studies. 58
26. 20 questions A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu One person thinks of something and everybody else has to try to find out by using only confirmation (yes/no) questions.
2-20
10-30 min
none
Description One person from the group thinks of something (e.g. cat, school, happiness). Everybody else has to ask yes/no (confirmation) questions from that person in order to find out what he/she thought of. The person who they are asking from can only answer “yes”, “no”, “I don’t know”, or “sometimes” (or other words like “usually”, “most of the time”, “rarely”,…). The group has to keep asking questions until they find out what it was. An example: - Is it an object? - Yes. - Is it made of metal? - No. - Is it made of wood? - Most of the times yes. - Is there one in this classroom? - Yes! - Is it larger than the blackboard? - No. - Is it a chair? - No. - Is it a desk? - Yes! 59
Moral E – This game is about using questions to figure something out. It helps learn the proper use of confirmation questions and about the various properties of object, living things, etc. Most importantly this game helps improve our communication in situations when we don’t understand foreigners: we learn to find out what they are trying to say with the help of questions. In this game, we use lots of the vocabulary that we have learnt in practice.
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27. Blind painter A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu One person has to describe a picture to another person who does not see the picture. Whoever doesn’t see it has to draw it.
2 or more
15 min
Paper and simple pictures/drawings
Description The group forms pairs of 2 people (if there is an uneven number of people, one group can have 3 people in it). In each pair, one person receives a simple drawing (person A) from the teacher, and the other takes an empty piece of paper and a pen/pencil (person B). The two people sit back-to-back. The goal of the game is that person B draws exactly what person A has on his/her paper. The rules are: 1. Person B can’t look at person A’s drawing (that’s why they are sitting back-to-back). 2. Person A has to explain what is on his/her drawing to person B. Person B has to draw it on his/her paper. 3. The pairs have only a given amount of time to finish (this depends on how complicated the picture is, usually 5-7 minutes is good). This rule is not that important, the teacher can also wait for them to finish if that seems better. 61
When the time is up, they can compare the original picture and the copy. Usually the result is funny. Then the two people change roles, in other words the A people become B people and the B people become A people. The new A and B people have the same task as before. Important! This game can be used to study new vocabulary. For example the pictures can have drawings of recently learnt words. In a more experienced group, the teacher can add a rule, so that person A can only explain without saying the names of the things on the paper. He/she can use other words to describe them or just describe what kind of lines person B should draw. The important thing is that he/she can’t say for example, “There is a house on the left and 3 cows on the right, in the garden of the house.” However, he/she can say “On the left side, there is a large item that has the shape of a square and there is a small rectangle on the front of the square…” etc. Moral E – This game uses a lot of English in a practical situation. Students must use new vocabulary, or must try to describe some words using other words. It makes their brain work a lot! They use English in practice. C – Calmness is important in situations where it is difficult to communicate with others. In this game the task is very easy, but the communication is difficult, and there is a time limit. The players must remain calm throughout the whole game to be able to work effectively and copy the drawing to the empty paper.
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28. Crazy family A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The family (everybody) has a crazy habit. The one person who comes from outside has to figure out what this crazy habit is.
4-30
10-30 min
none
Description One person goes out of the room. All the others will be members of the crazy family. They have to decide together what will be the crazy habit of the family. E.g. when they answer a question they touch their heads. (Other examples: they start their answer by “well”, or they look around before the answer or they always give one word as an answer, etc.) When they have decided, they tell the person who went out to come in. This person will ask questions from the members of the family. They have to answer doing their crazy habit (e.g. touching their heads). The goal of the person is to discover the crazy habit of the family. If he/she discovered the habit, we choose another person to go outside and the family chooses a new crazy habit. 63
Moral E – In this game we have to use our knowledge, choose a strategy and focus, especially if the crazy family chooses a habit that makes us think. For example if the habit is that we need to start every answer by the letter “a”. It is not easy, we have to concentrate and be creative using our English knowledge all the time. D – It is also important to be disciplined in this game. We need to answer the questions according to the crazy habit. The person who comes from outside has to be even more disciplined. This person wants to discover the habit, so he/she can’t give up and he/she has to keep asking the others (even though they are laughing a lot) so he/she can discover the crazy habit.
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29. Draw and describe A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu Someone draws a picture first, and the next person has to describe it with written words. The next person has to draw it based on the description and so on and so on.
5-30
5-20 min
paper and pens
Description The group sits in such a way (e.g. in the classroom), that each person knows who is “before” him/her and “after” him/her. Everyone takes out a piece of paper and writes one sentence at the top. Everyone gives the paper to the person after them (and of course also receives a new paper that already has a sentence on it). Now everybody has to draw what is written in the sentence, under the sentence. When they have finished drawing, they must fold down the paper, so that the original sentence can’t be seen, only the drawing. When this is done, everybody passes on the paper to the next person. Now everybody has a paper on which only a drawing is visible. Everyone has to write down what they see in the drawing. Again they must fold down the paper so that the drawing can’t be seen, but the newly written sentence can. They pass on the papers to the next person. The game continues like this, so that the people have to alternatively draw and write, and always pass the paper on. After about 6 rounds (3 drawings and 3 writings), the teacher stops the game. The last thing on each paper 65
should be a sentence. One after the other, everyone in the class reads the lines of sentences that lead from the original to the final. This game is good for practicing English: the teacher can give a topic that was previously studied, for example sports, or hobbies, or education, and the students should write the first sentence in that topic. Other than this the game is also great for practicing present continuous and the “there is” or “there are” formulas, since these are what we use most to describe pictures. Moral E – In this game we practice using our English to describe things. We use our theoretical knowledge to try to give on information to others in practice. This is the point of language learning: to be able to pass on information with the language we learned!
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30. Game of categories A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The person in the middle of the circle points at someone and says a category. That person’s neighbors have to say something from that category faster than the other neighbor.
8-25
15-30 min
none
https://youtu.be/rr6dG5VxJJA Description We form a circle and the teacher stands in the middle. Everybody has 3 lives. 1. When the game starts he/she points at someone and says a category (e.g. vegetables). 2. That person ducks and his/her neighbors point at each other saying something from that category (e.g. tomato, cucumber, onion, etc.) 3. If the person doesn’t duck fast, he/she loses one life. If he/she ducks then the slower neighbor loses one life. (So in one round only one person loses one life.) If the neighbors are both fast then no one loses a life. 4. After a round, the teacher points at another person and says another category (e.g. country). They have to act the same way as in the first round.
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5. If someone loses all his/her 3 lives, he/she falls out of the game and has to watch the active players from outside of the circle. The last two active players are the winners of the game. Examples for categories: country, city, ingredient, animal, color, singer, actor, subject at school, name, number, verb, fruit, vegetable, building, object, drink, food, adjective, plant, village in your country, religion, profession, part of the body, song, electronic device, mode of transportation, expression, painter, politician, river, island, etc. We should play this game as fast as possible to keep it exciting and funny. We can play it 2-3-4 times if the students enjoy it. If the students understand the game well, a student can be in the middle of the circle instead of the teacher. We should change that person sometimes to give the possibility for more students to try being in the middle. Moral E – Education is a very important challenge in our lives. To use what we have learnt and to use it faster than others is not easy, but it can be essential to have a good life. This game helps to understand the importance of knowledge and the importance of the ability to use our knowledge in real life. If we know millions of words, but we can’t use them in the moment we need them, that knowledge is not useful. Let’s try to build an active knowledge that really helps us in our lives. F – We can also learn fairness from this game. In the game everybody has 3 lives. We have to count these 3 lives for ourselves. It is easy to cheat, because only we have the responsibility of counting our lives, but if we learn how to enjoy the game correctly and fairly, everybody will enjoy it much more. We have to learn that in life sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, but in both cases we can have a positive attitude. 68
Ha – Happiness is a natural part of most games. In this game the fast actions and the difficulty of reacting very fast create excitement. We can forget about everything and just enjoy this excitement and laugh at the funny solutions of others and ourselves.
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31. Intense activity A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu One person has to act words in different ways and the others have to find out what the words are. The words remain the same, but the way of acting becomes more and more difficult.
6-10
30-60 min
small pieces of paper and pens
https://youtu.be/_A70SUpiTfg Description The participants form two teams. The students each take 3 small pieces of paper and write 3 things (words or expressions) on the three pieces of paper. They fold all the papers in half (so that the words written on them can’t be seen) and collect all the papers in a hat or a bag. They don’t tell the others what they wrote! In the first round of the game there will be one person who will be describing the words to his/her team. First one person comes from the first team and takes the bag full of papers. He/she has one minute to describe as many words as possible. The other team will measure the time. When the time starts, he/she takes out one paper from the bag and has to describe it using only words (no actions!). He/she can’t say the word or expression, or part of the word or expression that is on the paper. His/her team has to guess what the word or expression is. If they guess correctly, then they get a point and the speaker puts the paper on the table/ground in front of his/her team. If the time is up, they count how many points they have. Important: don’t throw the papers back in the bag yet! Also it is important to know that if the speaker reads a paper and the word or expression is too difficult, then he/she can throw it back into the bag. He/she can do this with any of the papers, but if he/she starts 70
describing one of them, then he/she can’t take a new paper, he/she has to finish the one he/she started. After the first team had one minute, the other team also has one minute to try and guess as many words as possible. They also send out a speaker, who will try to describe and explain the words/expressions on the paper. Of course that speaker also has the possibility of putting the paper back if the word/expression seems to be too difficult. The game continues until all the papers are gone from the bag. At this point the first round is over. The teams count how many points they have and remember it/write it down. They place their papers back into the bag and round 2 begins. In round 2 the same thing happens, except now the “speaking person” will be an “acting person”. He/she can only act, do movements. He/she can’t speak or make noises. Of course, he/she again has one minute to act the word/expression. The game continues just like in round 1 until all the papers are gone from the bag. In round 3 we put all the papers back into the bag. In this round the designated person can only say one word for each word/expression. He/she can say that word more times and in different ways, but it can only be one word! For example if the word he/she has to describe is “duck”, then he/she can say “animal”, and his/her team will try to guess which animal, and will sooner or later guess duck. It is important that the one word can’t be the word that they need to guess, and can’t be part of the word or expression they need to guess. For example if the word that needs to be guessed is “waterfall”, then the person can’t say “waterfall” or “water” or “fall”. In round 4 we put all the papers back into the bag. In this round the designated person can only make noises. He/she goes to some place where his/her team can’t see him/her. For example he/she can stand behind the whiteboard, behind a corner, behind his/her team or behind a cloth that the other team is holding. The important thing is 71
that the team doesn’t see him/her. The designated person can make any kind of sound (except words!!). Again, the same rules apply: the teams have 1 minute, and they alternate each other. In round 5 we put all the papers back into the bag. In this round the designated person can only use facial expressions! Ideally, he/she should stand in a way that his/her team can only see his/her face. He/she can make facial expression. Words and sounds are not allowed! Using other parts of his/her body is also not allowed, for example using the hands is forbidden. Only the face can be used! After round 5, the game is over. The teams add up their points and decide who won. Note: if the participants are not good at thinking of words or expressions for this game, then the teacher can write all the words/expressions for the game. Alternatively he/she can give a topic for the students: for example the students have to write newly learnt words. Moral E – This is an education game because the students/participants need to actively use their English to describe words and expressions. They also have to think hard when guessing words. They also practice nonverbal communication when acting, which is important when we forget a word in English. We must always try to communicate even when we forget some words, and we can do this by describing those words or acting them. G – This is a growth game, because we have the same task throughout the game, but we always do it more and more difficultly. The teams feel that by the end they are much better at communicating and finding out the words, because they can understand each other from only sounds or facial expressions. Ha – This game can be extremely funny if we play with a good team and good words. It is a great way to have fun while using English. 72
32. Detective game A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu There is a group of detectives and a group of witnesses. The detectives have to find out who committed a crime. The witnesses have to try and say the same details about the crime.
6-10
20-30 min
a paper and pen
https://youtu.be/jH0TTU64ICo Description The participants form two teams: the detectives (2-3 people) and the witnesses (everybody else). The detectives have to find out who the murderer is. The witnesses were there at the murder so they know all the information about it. The detectives talk to the witnesses one by one. In the beginning of the game the detectives go to a different place where they can’t see or hear the witnesses. The detectives have to think of 7 questions that they will ask from the witnesses. These questions can’t be changed later in the game, so they will be asking the same things from all the witnesses. During the preparation, the witnesses have to discuss what they know about the crime. They have to talk about as many details as possible, so when the detectives ask them, they will say exactly the same answers. 73
When the preparation is over, the game starts. First one witness goes to the detectives. The detectives ask all their questions after each other. The witness answers as well as he/she can, based on what the witnesses discussed during the preparation. The witness can’t say “I don’t know”, he/she always has to give an answer. The answers should be short (one or two words). The detectives write down the witness’s answers. After the first witness is finished, the next one comes. Again the detectives ask the questions, the witness answers and the detectives write down the answers. This continues until all the witnesses were questioned. In the end, the detectives compare the answers they received from the witnesses. They count which witness has how many “mistakes”. Someone made a “mistake” if he/she said a different answer than most of the other witnesses. In the end the detectives decide who the murderer is. The murderer will be the person who had the most “mistakes”. It is important to see that a witness makes a “mistake” if he/she says a different answer than most of the other witnesses. This can even happen if the one who made the “mistake” actually said the right thing! For example the witnesses can decide that the victim was dressed in black. Then if the police ask what color the victim’s shirt was, and two witnesses say black and four witnesses accidentally say red, then the people who said black will have made a “mistake”. The police will think that they are suspicious, that maybe they are the murderers.
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Moral E – We need to use our brains a lot in this game: we need to remember details if we are witnesses or try to figure out tricky questions if we are detectives. We also have to use a lot of English, especially when asking and answering questions properly! C – Apart from being smart, this game requires calmness. If the detectives are not calm during the preparation, they will not be able to think of good questions. More importantly, the witnesses have to be calm when they answer the questions! If they are not calm, they will say the wrong thing, and the detectives will write them down. F – In this game the witnesses have to be fair. If they don’t pay attention to answering correctly, it will be bad for the other witnesses. Also the witnesses have a chance to trick the first witness by agreeing to change the situation after he/she leaves. This would also be unfair and not nice!
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33. Three at a time A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu We stand in a circle and 3 people are crouching. We have to change who is crouching, but we need to have 3 people crouching all the time.
4-30
5-15 min
none
https://youtu.be/8wxFIVk4IWk Description We stand in a circle and 3 people are crouching when we start the game. Nobody can talk! We have to change who is crouching without talking or discussing a rule. So we will try to pay attention to the others and crouch when others are coming up from crouching. There can’t be more or less crouching people than 3 at a time. The game sounds very easy but actually we all need to focus to do it. Moral F – In this game we really need to be fair. If we don’t crouch, others have to crouch more instead of us, but if everybody takes his/her part, nobody has to crouch too much and we can all enjoy the cooperation. If a team works well, nobody has too much pressure, because everybody takes part. We also have to pay attention to others, just like in real life to be able to help them when they need it, and to get help from them when we need it. 76
34. House, tree, dog A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The students draw a picture in pairs without talking. Both have to hold the same pen at the same time.
2 or more (even number)
10-20 min
paper and pen
Description We form pairs of the group and we give one pen and one paper to each pair. They have to sit down facing each other. 1. The teacher tells the students that they can’t speak at all during the game. 2. The teacher tells that they all have to imagine a house with a tree and a dog. (No talking!) 3. Then the pairs can hold the pen (both of them hold the same pen at the same time). They have to draw a house, a tree and a dog on the paper. (Still no talking!) 4. When every pair has finished the drawing, we sit in a circle, and they can present their drawings and share their experiences. Optional changes to the game We can play the same game with different things, for example with recently learnt words. 77
After this word-drawing version, if the class can do it well, we can ask them to imagine an animal (not telling them what kind of animal) or we can ask them to imagine a nice family event (without telling exact instructions), etc. Like this, the drawing becomes much more difficult. Moral F – Fairness is the most basic skill that the students have to use in this game. When they hold the same pen with their partner, they will feel that they need to cooperate to draw a nice drawing. Some pairs will maybe let one person draw, and the other only follows. If this happens, maybe they will have a nice drawing, but the follower person will feel that the drawing is not his/hers. So, when we share, we can emphasize that the best drawings are not the nicest ones, but the ones whose drawers are the happiest. A – When we cooperate, we develop our ability to work together in a nice way. We have to practice how to lead and how to follow other people’s lead. It becomes part of our aura, our personality. If we are able to cooperate in a nice and friendly way, others will be happy to work with us. We have to learn how to respect others and how to make our goals reality.
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35. Mirror game A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu One person of each pair follows the hand movements of his partner as if he/she would be that person’s reflection in the mirror.
2 or more (even number)
10-20 min
as many pens as there are people
https://youtu.be/r7ycXNhv94A Description We create pairs of participants. They should decide which person (of the pair) will play the human, and which person will play his/her reflection in the mirror. The teacher explains and shows the starting position of the game: the human and his/her mirror reflection have to stand face to face, there should be around half a meter between them, and they have to lift their hands towards one another with their palms facing each other’s palms (see picture). They have to look into each other’s eyes during the whole game! Also they can’t speak! Different phases of the game: 1.
First, the human will slowly move his/her hands and the reflection will try to follow the movement for a while (2-3 min). 2. After that the participants change roles: the humans become reflections, and the reflections become humans. They try the same game with these different roles (2-3 min). 3. Then, the teacher gives 2 pens to each group. The pairs (still in the face to face position) have to hold the 79
pens between their index fingers. We play the first part again with this modification. The pens should not fall down (2-3 min). 4. The pairs change roles again, humans become reflections and reflections become humans (2-3 min). 5. The most difficult part of the game: the pairs don’t decide who the human is and who the reflection is. They have to follow each other’s movements carefully. Moral F – Fairness is really basic and important in this game. If one person doesn’t pay attention to his/her partner, the mirror-effect will not work. The pair who doesn’t work together lets the pens fall. The participants can experience that they should pay attention to their partners, they should only do things to others that they expect from others. If they find a balance and equality, the game works better and better. A – It is also an Aura game, because it shows us that we should always pay attention to others, help them, be nice with them. Sometimes we must lead, sometimes we must follow. But in both cases we need to fulfill our role as precisely as we can. The changes of roles also show us that our relationships and our communication should be balanced: sometimes we have the initiative, sometimes we listen to others’ ideas. C – Calmness is important when we try to work in pairs. We need to move calmly so that our partner can follow us. Also if something does not work or if our partner is not as fast or precise as we are, we should not get angry, but help him/her patiently. D – Both the human and the reflection have to be very disciplined. They have to pay attention, keep control over their movements. If one of them loses focus, the pens will fall. Hu – Humility is important when following the lead of others. In this mirror-game we can’t achieve the goal of the game if we don’t respect our partner. We have to understand that we can’t always be the leader. 80
36. Things in common A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The team members have to find things in common that are true for everyone in the team.
6-20
10-20 min
a paper and pen for each team
Description We make teams of the students. The teams should have 3-5 people in them. Every team has to sit down together and they get a paper and a pen. We draw on the blackboard: we like:
we don’t like:
-
-
-
-
-
-
we can:
we can’t:
-
-
-
-
-
-
The teams have to draw down the same and we ask them to fill it out. So, they have to find things that all the team members like, things that nobody likes from the team and things that they all can do and other things that nobody can do from the team. We can help them with one or two examples. It is very important to tell them that they need to 81
speak English during the whole game, so they have to ask each other and discuss everything in English. When they are done, we can ask them to share the things that they found. Here is an example: we like:
we don’t like:
- bananas
- to clean the house
- to study English
- to be late
- our family
- spiders
we can:
we can’t:
- swim
- fly
- sing an English song
- drive a car
- talk to a foreigner
- speak French
Moral F – This game is about getting to know each other better. It helps the students to practice how to work together, how to ask everybody in the group, how to cooperate. Of course, in every team there are active people and less active people, but this game helps to encourage the less active people to participate. They have to get the information from every member, so one enthusiastic person can’t do the job of the whole team. Fairness will be an important skill in their adult life so if it becomes part of their character as a child or young person, it won’t be difficult for them as an adult. A – This game trains us on how to act in a team, how to behave ourselves in a society. We can learn cooperation and interest for others. Everybody needs love from others. The first step to love somebody is to get to know him/her better. So if we ask each other and find out interesting things about others or things in common, we can feel that we are a team, we belong together and we are here to help each other. 82
37. Where do I belong? A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu Everyone has a little piece of colored paper on their foreheads. They must form groups based on their colors without telling each other their color.
7-30
10-20 min
little pieces of paper that can stick to skin
https://youtu.be/LKO_LDl9-E4 Description The teacher makes little pieces of colored paper that can stick to a person’s forehead (if someone doesn’t want to put a paper on his/her forehead, their back is also fine, just make sure they can’t see their own paper!). For example if there are 13 people playing, the teacher should make 3 red pieces, 3 blue pieces, 3 yellow pieces, 3 brown pieces, and 1 green piece. There should always be a color that only has 1 piece! This is important for the moral of the game. The teacher puts one piece of paper on every participant. The participants don’t know what color they have. They can, however, see everyone else’s color. Important rule: Participants can’t tell other participants what color is on their forehead! No one is allowed to know 83
what color is on them! The game is very simple: the team must make groups based on the colors on their foreheads. For example all the reds have to go to one place, all the blues have to go to another place, etc. Since nobody knows their own color, the participants have to help each other to find their teams. When all the color-groups are ready, they must each think of a team name. After all the teams have a name, the game is over, and people must share what they experienced. It is especially important that the person who was left alone (e.g. in the previous example the person who had the green color) shared what he/she felt. Moral F – This game tries to make the participants understand that it is bad to leave people out of groups. In our everyday lives we sometimes leave people out and reject people because of small things, which are actually not important, like how they look like, what kind of clothes they wear or what country they are from, etc. It is important to see past these small things and to try to accept others. It is very bad to feel alone, and it is very good to accept more people in a group, to make new friends.
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38. Ching Chang Chung A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu People say “ching chang chung” as they fight each other from a distance.
7-30
10-20 min
none
https://youtu.be/MybtJYYPMHA Description The group forms a circle. One person starts the game by saying “Ching” and swiping their hands together towards someone else in the circle. The person who they aimed at has to defend him/herself by swiping upwards and saying “Chang”. The two neighbors of that person have to say “Chung” while swiping their hands towards each other. The person who was aimed at starts again with “Ching”. If anybody messes up or is late, they have to exit the circle. The game continues until only two people are left. To understand this game easily, please watch the video. The game has a rhythm to it that everyone should try to keep. This rhythm can get faster and faster as the game goes on. When the group 85
starts to understand the game, you can play with people falling out if they are slow or if they say the wrong thing. An important addition can be made to the game: instead of saying ching, chang and chung, we can use newly learnt phrases or words that we need to practice, or whose pronunciation we need to practice, or with past tense, e.g. apples-bananas-mangos, OR mos-qui-to OR take-it-easy OR learn-learned-learnt, etc.. Moral G – This game is a bit confusing at the beginning, but if we play it more and more, it becomes easier and easier and more and more fun! With this game we can show especially children, that if we practice, we grow. By growing, we become better people and we can feel better in our daily lives. Ha – This game is just for fun, and we can play it anytime without having to run around. Still we have to use a lot of energy to focus and to be able to follow the game. It also increases our ability to focus and pay attention to others.
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39. Cheering rock-paper-scissors A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu People play rock-paper-scissors, but the loser has to cheer on the winner. The winner goes to play the next game and so on.
15-100
5-15 min
none
https://youtu.be/h2gEq1vwJYA Description This game involves playing rock-paper-scissors. The rules of rock-paper-scissor are well known (rock beats scissor, scissor beats paper, paper beats rock; if you don’t know the rules please watch the video for this game). When the game starts, anyone can go to anyone and ask to play rock-paper-scissors. They play a game, and the loser has to follow the winner around and shout his/her name, the loser has to cheer for the winner from then on. The winner can walk around and find the next person to play with. They play, and the loser and the loser’s whole team have to follow the winner from then on and cheer him on! 87
This way if someone wins many times after each other he/she will have a huge cheering team behind him/her. In the end there will only be two people left – they will play with each other and the winner will be the winner of the whole game, and everyone cheers him/her! Moral G – This game is about growth: as someone gets more and more followers, his/her team grows and he/she feels better and better. The members of the team also feel better and better as more people come to cheer. If we decide to live life in a way that we focus on growth, we will feel more and more fulfilled as we grow. It is also better to work in a team that has goals to grow, than in a team that will never grow and change. Ha – This game give good vibes to the people who win, they really feel supported and appreciated and happy. The people who lost will also be happy because they can have fun cheering together, like when cheering for a sports team.
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40. Our story A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu We write a story together: everyone adds a sentence to the story.
4-30
5-15 min
none
https://youtu.be/QzGierQSXRI Description The game is very easy: the teacher says a sentence (e.g. “Once upon a time there was a very bad father who lived with his wife.”) and explains that the students have to say a new sentence to continue the story (e.g. “They had 5 daughters.”) When someone said a sentence, another student will say a new one. This way we are going to create a whole new story, and everybody can participate in the creation. They can say any funny or serious sentences but they have to pay attention to say correct sentences that make sense. You should follow an order so each student can say a sentence. When everybody has said a sentence, we can keep going. The teacher decides when the game is over.
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Moral G – Everybody can participate in the creation of the new story, so they all contribute to achieve the goal in common. With every student, the story grows and becomes longer, funnier and more colorful. They can all feel that they are part of it, and it grows because of them. The students build the story together the same way they would build a house. If everyone does his/her best, the house or the story will be big and nice. F – Some people are more active in classes than others. But in this game, everybody is equal. Every student can contribute with his/her own ideas. The story will be everybody’s story and all the students have the same right to contribute. Ha – This game can be very funny, especially if the level of the students is good enough to make funny and more complicated sentences. They can laugh and enjoy themselves while they practice English.
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41. Shout the message! A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu One team has to shout a message to another team. A third team has to make sure the message can’t get through.
6-30
5-15 min
none
Description There are three teams: Team A, B and C. They stand in three lines (A, B, C). The teacher tells Team A a message: one sentence. The game starts and Team A has to shout the message to Team C. Team B has to shout loudly and jump around so the message can’t go through to Team C. Team C tries to hear the message. If they know the message they tell the teacher who tells them yes or no. After one round, the teams change roles and keep playing. The teacher can use this game to review sentence structures that the class studied recently. The focus that they have during the game helps them to remember the sentences. Moral Ha – This is an exciting game that really gives a lot of energy to any participant. All three teams really have to focus and be loud and get really excited. The game is very funny and can be played with students of any age. 91
42. Bee tag A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu People form groups of 3 and they have to sting other groups in the back, like bees.
9-39
10-25 min
none
https://youtu.be/7WwyJmaWOZk Description The people playing make groups of 3. Each group of three will form one “bee”. They have to chain their arms together. The two people on the sides will be the wings of the bee, and the person in the middle will be the body. The body can sting other bees, because he/she has his/her hand pointed out in front of him/her. This pointed finger is the stinger of the bee. The wings just have to wave their arms like the wings of a bee and they have to control which way the bee goes. All members of the bee should make a bee sound. The goal of each bee is to sting other bees in the back. They have to sting the back of the “body” of the bee – in other words they have to sting the back of the 92
middle person. A bee also dies if the members of the bee fall apart. If someone is stung or dies, then their bee falls apart and they lose the game. The game continues until only two teams are left. Alternatively, bees that have been stung can start again far away from the others. In this version the game just continues until everyone is tired. Moral Ha – In this game we have to run a lot and we can let out our extra energy and stress. This is important for being happy. It’s good to have fun once in a while. In this game, we can have fun while being is small teams, and we have to work together to be able to sting other bees.
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43. Don’t touch! A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The group makes a circle, and everybody tries not to touch the person in the middle.
8-30
10-20 min
none
https://youtu.be/1L7fAP_TNrU Description The group makes a circle. One person stands in the middle of the circle. He/she has to stand in one place during the game. The people standing in the circle have to hold hands. There are two rules: 1. If the circle is broken then the two people who couldn’t hold hands fall out of the game. 2. If someone touches the person in the middle, then they change places. A new round starts, and everybody who fell out of the game can join the circle again. The game starts and the people struggle to not touch the middle person. Moral Ha – This is a very happy game. We can reduce our stress and just have fun with friends! Don’t forget to smile! B – We have to have confidence and strength in this game. Most of the strength that we need is spiritual strength. If we believe that we are strong and we fight with all our power, then we will not lose. 94
44. Fishermen’s tag A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu A game of tag where if someone is caught then he/she will hold hands with whomever caught him/her. The line of people who are “it” will get bigger and bigger.
10-50
10-20 min
none
https://youtu.be/eKGwBst02Cg Description Just like in a normal game of tag, one person is “it”, and he/she has to catch the others. In fishermen’s tag, if he/she catches someone, that person will hold the hand of the original “it” and they will be “it” together, they have to move together. If they catch someone else, that person will also join the chain of “it” people by holding the hand of one of the people. The game continues like this. The chain of “it” people will grow and grow, until finally they have caught everyone. Moral Ha – This game is really fun for everybody. Students enjoy releasing their stress and can forget 95
about everyday problems when having fun in different ways. G – In normal tag the person who is “it” has a difficult task. If he/she catches someone, the new person will have to do this difficult task. However, in fishermen’s tag, when someone is caught, they have to work together with the person who is “it”, and do the hard task together. The task becomes easier and easier as more people join. In the end it is very easy to catch the remaining people. This shows that if we grow as a team instead of trying to do everything by ourselves, we can achieve much more.
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45. Freeze tag A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu A game of tag where if someone is caught, he/she freezes and can’t move until another player unfreezes him/her by touching him/her.
5-30
10-20 min
none
https://youtu.be/3BLWEAVvl9A Description Just like in a normal game of tag, one person is “it”, and he/she has to catch the others. In freeze tag, if he/she catches someone, that person has to stop right where he/she is in the exact position he/she is (like an ice sculpture). He/she has to stay as he/she is until another player thaws or unfreezes him/her by touching him/her. The goal of the person who is “it” is to freeze everybody. The goal of the other players is to not get frozen and to unfreeze their partners. Note: unlike other kinds of tag, in freeze tag always the same person is “it”. The game continues until everybody is frozen or until the person who is “it” gets very tired – the teacher has to pay attention to this. Then he/she can choose a new “it”. Moral Ha – This game is really fun for everybody. Students enjoy releasing their stress and can forget about everyday problems when having fun in different ways. F – In this game we have to help each other to become unfrozen. Through this we can learn about fairness: we should help others when we can, and others will help us when we are in trouble. 97
46. Monkey see, monkey do tag A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu A game of tag where the person who is “it” has to think of a special way to run while catching the others. The others have to run the same way.
5-30
10-20 min
none
https://youtu.be/9aLaGVqzdXo Description Just like in a normal game of tag, one person is “it”, and he/she has to catch the others. If he/she catches someone, that person will be “it”, so he/she has to now catch someone (only one person is “it” at a time). In “monkey see, monkey do” tag, there is an extra rule that the person who is “it”, has to act somehow while running, for example he/she crouches down while running. All the others have to also run in the same way: they also have to crouch (in this example). When the person who is “it” catches someone, the new “it” has to think of a new way of running (e.g. his/her hands are raised high while running). Of course now everybody has to act like the new “it” (running with raised hands). The game continues like this. This game is great for teaching animal names if the children have to act like animals. They should also say the animal name when they choose it. Also the game can be modified to use other words. For example 98
people the students can play with other nouns or with adverbs (slowly, quickly, crazily, etc.). Moral Ha – This game is really fun for everybody. Children enjoy acting funny or like animals, and older students enjoy releasing their stress and can forget about everyday problems when having fun.
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47. Red light, green light A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu One person is the policeman, who has to make sure that the group doesn’t move when the traffic light is red.
4-20
10-20 min
none
https://youtu.be/ciFEmmiSykk Description One person from the group will be the policeman. The policeman stands at one side of the classroom or playground. The rest of the group stands in a line about 6-10 meters from the policeman. The goal of the people in the group is to touch the policeman. There are two states of the game: Green light – The policeman is looking away from the group, and the people in the group can move towards the policeman. Red light – The policeman is looking at the group, and the members of the group can’t move at all! They must stay in exactly the same position as they were when the light turned red. If the policeman sees someone moving, he/she points at them and says their name and they must go back to the start. 100
In the beginning of the game, the teacher says “green light”, so the group starts moving towards the policeman (whose back is towards the group). The policeman suddenly says “red light” and he/she turns around. If he/she sees anyone moving, he/she points at them and says their name, and they have to go back to the starting line. After a while the policeman says “green light” again and looks the other way so he/she can’t see the group. Since it is green light, the group can again move towards the policeman. The game goes on like this and the first one to touch the policeman will become the policeman in the next round. The game can also be played in a way that the teacher says “red light” and “green light”, not the policeman. The game can be played with other words, for example “Go” and “Stop” for smaller children, or with any two words or categories that the group is learning. For example if the teacher says an animal name then that is the same as “Green light”; if he/she says a fruit name then that is the same as “Red light”. The game can be made more interesting if the teacher sees that it is good for the group. One option is that the teacher/policeman sometimes says “green light”, even when it is already green light, or “red light” when it is already red light, so the group has to really listen to what the teacher/policeman is saying. Moral Ha – We can all be childish from time to time by playing fun games. This game is perfect for that. It causes happiness in us because of the active movements, the quick stops and the competition spirit. F – In this game the policeman is in a very responsible situation. He/she decides who has to go back to the start. This requires great fairness. He/she has to be fair when deciding whether one person moved or not during the red light.
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48. Smack the shoulder A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The person in the middle of the circle has to smack the shoulder of one person in the circle with a rolled up paper.
6-20
10-20 min
a rolled up paper
https://youtu.be/OVDZypKP6fw Description The students stand or sit in a circle, and one student stands in the middle of the circle. Everybody chooses a name. If we learned the names of animals, we can practice them with this game, and everyone can choose an animal name (tiger, rabbit, elephant, lion, cat, dog, monkey, cow, chicken, etc.). But we can play the game with any words that the class has learnt recently (e.g. verbs in past tense, colors, expressions, fruits, conjunctions, etc.) The person in the middle of the circle holds a rolled up paper in his/her hand. Somebody starts the game and the middle person has to smack his/her shoulder with the rolled up paper. He/she can defend him/herself by saying another person’s name before the middle person smacks him/her. If he/she could say another name, the middle person has to smack the person whose name was said. So, this way people say each other’s names to defend themselves against the middle person. 102
The game continues like this until the middle person can smack someone before he/she could say somebody else’s name. In this case, he/she changes place with that person, and the smacked person will become the new middle person.
Moral Ha – While practicing English we can be very happy and have a lot of fun. In this game the students will laugh and try to focus without feeling the difficulty of learning a language. So this game can be a nice way of practicing vocabulary and pronunciation. The students won’t even notice that they are studying; they will have fun and enjoy the game. E – If the students have learnt new vocabulary, they will be able to use it in this game. It is easier to remember the others’ names if we understand and know all the words, so they can understand that education and knowledge give them advantage in this game and in life also.
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49. Star tag A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The participants form groups and stand in a star shape. One person runs around and taps a person’s back. That person’s team has to run around the star quicker than the tapping person.
17-50
10-25 min
none
https://youtu.be/KKJzZ9KCx30 Description The participants form 4, 5 or 6 equally sized groups (depending on how many people there are). An ideal group should have between 4-8 people. These groups stand in straight lines in a star shape, so they are all facing a middle point (see picture). Everyone in the star can only look straight forward and can’t turn around.
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One person goes to the outside of the star: he/she is the runner. The runner runs around the star, and taps the back of one person at the end of a line. That person taps the person in front of him/her, and that person taps the back of the next person, and so on and so on. In the end, everyone in that line will have felt a tap on their back. When someone feels a tap on their back, they have to tap the person in front of them and start running, because they have to run around the star and get back into their line! It is important that the runner is running in one direction, but the members of the line have to run in the other direction! So in summary, the runner taps one person’s back. The runner starts running around quickly in one direction and stands in the place of the line. While this is happening the people who were in that line receive taps on their backs and they start running in the other direction. So the runner will be running around the star for example rightwards, and the line of people leftwards. When everyone gets back to the line, the last person will be the new runner. He/she can go around the star and tap anyone’s back. Moral Ha – This is a very happy game, and even with experienced players there is many times a lot of confusion that is very funny. C – Why do we need to be calm in this game? Because when someone taps our back, we need to first tap the next person’s back before we run. The situation is tense and exciting, but if we remain calm, we can remember to act properly, and we won’t forget to tap the next person’s back. If we are not calm, that will cause a lot of confusion. 105
50. Bzzzzz! A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu There are two teams. Each team’s goal is to bring the other team to their side. The two teams can only meet in the neutral territory in the middle, where they have to say “Bzzzz…” without breathing.
6-100
5-25 min
territory borders
https://youtu.be/OKnIg2zkb38 Description The participants make two teams. The teacher gives them each a territory that is clearly visible. In between the two territories there is an area that is “neutral”. Anybody can go in the neutral area, but they can’t take a breath there! They have to continuously say “Bzzzzzzzzzz…” while they still have air left. If they need new air, they have to go to their territory. The goal of the game is to pull the members of the other team to your territory. If you step into the enemy’s territory (for example because they pull you in), then you join their team. The game is over when everyone is one team. 106
Moral Ha – This is a game where we have to be happy. We are happy of course because it is a funny game, but more importantly we learn to be happy if things go in unexpected ways. In this game maybe we will change teams several times, because they pull us over. If this happens we must happily be a part of our new team! Don’t be sad that you are not part of your old team but be happy to join the new team! A – Good aura is important in this team game. If we have good aura, we will help our teammates if the opposing team is pulling them over. If we have bad aura, we will not help our teammates that are in trouble. Because of this, the team with the better aura will win in this game. G – Through this game we learn how powerful growth is. The more people we can get on our team, the more we can accomplish. Growth is especially important, because if two people pull one person, then the one person doesn’t have much of a chance. It is not just a one-on-one game.
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51. Magnetic people A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu Everybody chooses someone who they are “attracted to” (yes person) and someone who “repels” them (no person), and they try to get as close/far to/from the respective people as possible.
8-40
5-15 min
none
https://youtu.be/RdqfOYaj7OA Description This game is designed to have fun and use our extra energy. The group stands in a circle. Everybody has to think of two people in the circle: one that they are “attracted to”, and someone who “repels” them. We can call these people their “yes” and “no” persons. In the beginning, these two people are secret; nobody should know who chose who. When the game starts, everybody has two goals: 1. To go as close as possible to their yes person. 2. To go as far away as possible from their no person. 108
These are the only two rules. When the game starts, everyone will start running towards someone and away from someone, so the game will become very chaotic. The game ends after a while when the teacher says so. The teacher can start a new round, where everyone chooses new people. Moral Ha – This game is about letting out extra stress and energy in a very happy way. In this game we will run and laugh a lot, while having a good time with friends.
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52. Pony A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu Everyone stands in a circle and sings the pony song. One person is a pony, and everyone he/she dances with also becomes a pony. In the end we all become dancing ponies.
8-100
10-15 min
none
https://youtu.be/HSDauUysHZU Description We need to learn a song to play this game. The song goes (please learn the melody from the video): This is the story of my pony, the story of my little pony. This is the story of my pony; this is what you told me! Front, front, front, my baby! Side, side, side, my baby! Back, back, back, my baby! This is what you told me! Everyone stands in a circle. One person stands in the middle; he/she will be the first pony. Everyone starts singing the song and clapping. The pony runs around happily in the middle like a pony and also sings the song. After the first verse (at the end of “This is the story of my pony; this is what you told me!”), the pony goes to any 110
person standing in the circle. The song continues; all the other people continue singing and clapping. During the “Front, front, front, my baby!” the pony and that person dance facing each other. During the “Side, side, side, my baby!” the pony and that person dance side to side. During the “Back, back, back, my baby!” the pony and that person dance back to back. During the “This is what you told me!” the person that danced with the pony joins in the center of the circle and becomes a new pony. The song starts again and now two people are ponies. In this round, they will both go to other people. This way there will be 4 ponies in the third round. In the next round there will be 8 ponies, and then 16, and so on and so on, until everyone becomes a pony. Moral Ha – It is obvious that this game is mostly about being happy and enjoying ourselves. If we play this game, we learn to let go of all of our fears and constrictions, and we will be happy and stress-free for at least a short time. If we really get the feeling of this game, we will be happy during the whole day, because we understand that many times people are too serious and forget to be happy – but they could be happy any time! A – This game requires good aura, confidence and a good character, so that we are able to dance in front of all our friends, in front of other students. If a teacher plays with the class, they will feel closer to the teacher, because that they see he/she is a friendly teacher, and has good aura. If we play with friends who have good aura, we can all freely enjoy the game and laugh at each other and at ourselves! 111
53. Winking killer A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu Everybody gets their role: there is a killer, an angel and a policeman. The rest of the people are citizens. The killer tries to kill the others by winking while the others try to find out who the killer is.
6-30
10-30 min
none
https://youtu.be/ZeKBN9PmYow Description We sit/stand in a circle. Everyone closes their eyes and the teacher gives out the three important roles, so that no one knows who have the roles. The three people have to remember their roles without telling them to anybody else. All the other players are just normal citizens. When the three roles are distributed everyone can open their eyes. The game begins and everybody needs to act their role without speaking! -
Killer: The killer can kill the others by winking at them, but he/she has to do it in secret, when the others don’t see. If they discover who the killer is, they won’t look in his/her eyes, and he/she can’t kill them. 112
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Angel: The angel can cure the others. When he/she sends a little kiss to someone, the person comes to life again. The angel has to act in secret too, because if the killer finds out who the angel is, he/she will kill him/her. The angel can’t cure him/herself. Policeman: The policeman tries to find the killer. When he/she pulls his/her eyebrows together while looking at someone, that person has to nod if he/she is the killer, or shake his/her head if he/she is an innocent or the angel. This way the policeman can discover who the killer is, but he/she has to be careful: if the killer sees that he/she is the policeman, he/she will kill him/her. He/she can’t tell the others if he/she found the killer. Citizens: The citizens try to discover who the killer might be. If they die they have to show it by lifting their hands towards the middle of the circle. If the angel sends them a kiss, they are cured and they can continue playing. (Alternatively the dead people can stand out of the circle; in the demonstration video we use this rule.)
During the game, if some people think they know who the killer is, they have to raise their hands. If at least 3 hands are in the air, they can vote: the teacher counts 1,2,3, and the people point their hands at one person. If the majority of the hands are pointed to one person, that person dies. He/she has to tell what his/her role was. If he/she was the killer, the others won the game. If not, then the game continues. If the killer kills everybody, he/she wins. Moral Ha – This game is very funny and exciting. We have to communicate without using words, and discover the others’ roles while trying to keep our role in secret. We can laugh together and try to work together as well as possible. 113
54. Secret leader A – B – C – D – E – F – G – Ha – Hu The group follows a secret leader, and one person outside the group has to guess who the leader is.
6-20
10-25 min
none
https://youtu.be/9cZAipUff_w Description Everyone sits (or stands) in a circle, and one person is chosen to leave the circle – this person has to go away so that he/she can’t hear what the people are talking about in the circle. The others have to choose one person who will be the secret leader of the group. The secret leader will do a movement repetitively, i.e. he/she does the same movement again and again. The others have to pay attention to him/her and do the same movement. The person who was sent outside comes into the middle of the circle and tries to find out who the leader is. The leader can (and should!) change the movement from time to time into some other repetitive movement. The rest of the group has to follow, but this has to be done so that the person in the middle can’t figure out who was the one who started the new movements, who was the leader. 114
The person in the middle can guess 3 times who the leader is. After he/she figures it out or fails to figure it out, the round is over and he/she changes places with the leader, so in the next round the previous leader goes outside while the others choose a new leader. If the middle person couldn’t guess correctly then he/she will be the middle person in the next round also. Moral Hu – Everybody has to have the humility to learn to follow the leader quietly if they want to work well as a team. The leader has to have the humility to pay attention to the team and change to new movements at good times, when the team is ready. C – Calmness is important for everyone, but especially for the secret leader. He/she has to stay calm when the person in the middle is trying to find out who the leader is, when he/she is being examined. D – Discipline is required for all members of the team, because they must at all times try to pay attention to the secret leader (but also do this not so obviously, so that the person in the middle can’t find out). If they don’t pay attention to the leader, and the leader changes the movement and nobody follows, then the person in the middle will find out right away who the leader is.
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Outdoor Games
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Outdoor Games How to use this part of the book? The games of this section are designed for more mature groups where the members know and trust each other. Most of the games are difficult and require a good level of English. But as these games develop personal and team skills very strongly, we can use them even in our native language if the group’s English level would not allow us to use them. The key words under the title help us to choose the right game for our group. For practical purposes each game is suited with icons to help plan:
number of participants
estimated time
requirements, equipment
The games of this section are often long, so before we start them we should give the students a few minutes to prepare themselves so we won’t have to interrupt the game. All games have an extensive description, but many games also have an explanation video to help understand how the game works. The links to these videos can be found right before the description of the game. Some games can be dangerous if we or our group are not prepared for them, so we should be careful when choosing a game. We should play “trust games” (e.g. lifting or catching each other, blindfolded games) only with responsible groups. If somebody doesn’t feel comfortable joining a game like this, we can motivate but we should never force him/her to participate. We should also be very careful if we play outdoors because of potentially dangerous animals and obstacles. Some games also require the use of lights, for example candles – we should always make sure that there is no chance that we will cause a fire accident or forest fire! The games are just advised activities; it is the game coordinator’s responsibility to keep everyone safe. The authors of the book don’t take responsibility for any accidents. 117
Some of the games in this part of the book require sharing. By sharing we deepen the experience, get to understand it and learn from others. To achieve this it is important to create a nice, warm atmosphere where everybody feels safe and accepted. Everybody should be comfortable and hear and see the others (sitting in a circle is ideal). If there are too many people to make a real conversation, we should form more groups for sharing. As game coordinators, we should never judge the thoughts of the participants or force them to speak, instead we should nicely motivate them to share their ideas and thank them if they do so. In a sharing section the focus is on the participants’ opinions, experiences and feelings. We should guide the conversation with questions, because conclusions that the participants make by themselves are much deeper and more personal than the ones that we give them from “outside”. Thus, we should use our own thoughts and the book’s ideas only to complete the participants’ conclusions. We did our best to collect these great activities and games. Please use them creatively and with great joy. In case of questions or comments, please contact us at [email protected].
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Table of Contents – Outdoor Games Table of Contents – Outdoor Games .................. 119 1. Blind journey................................................... 120 2. Blue mango ..................................................... 125 3. Bus station ...................................................... 129 4. Catch each other............................................. 131 5. Caterpillar ....................................................... 133 6. Compassion game........................................... 135 7. Crocodile river ................................................ 140 8. Few feet .......................................................... 142 9. Hot air balloon ................................................ 144 10. Human chairs ................................................ 148 11. Journey into a story ...................................... 149 12. Just hanging .................................................. 154 13. Labyrinth tag ................................................. 156 14. Let’s build empathy ...................................... 158 15. Light ring ....................................................... 160 16. Merchant game ............................................ 161 17. Number War ................................................. 165 18. Quality market .............................................. 167 19. Rope path ..................................................... 170 20. Sinking ship ................................................... 172 21. Sock challenge .............................................. 176 22. Spider’s web ................................................. 179 23. Stick together ............................................... 181 24. Team plank walking ...................................... 184 25. Team puzzle .................................................. 186 26. Trust elevator ............................................... 189 27. Turn the sheet .............................................. 191 28. Uninhabited island........................................ 192 29. We’re all on the same ship ........................... 195 119
1. Blind journey method, self-reflection, values, trust, blindfold, senses, motivation
10-100 + helpers
30-60 min + 30 min sharing
large preparation beforehand, equipment depends on the stations
Description: This game is actually a method used to pass on values, insight, life lessons, and in general spiritual things. Throughout the whole game the participants are blindfolded. The game will use the other senses of the human body, such as hearing, touch, smell, taste, to give on a message. When a person’s sight is taken away, he/she pay much more attention to everything else, so this method makes the participant focus. The method can be used in many different ways to teach many different things, be creative with it! Here we will give an example where for future teachers we deepen the understanding of AHHA skills: Aura, Belief, Calmness, Discipline, Education, Fairness, Growth, Happiness, Humility. For the game we need participants and leaders – the participants will take part in the game and learn about the skills, and the leaders will lead them and teach them. Ideally there should be about 3-4 participants for 1 leader (e.g. if there are 30 students who want to play, then 10 teachers would be good as leaders). The stations should be far enough from each other that the people there don’t disturb other stations. For the preparation of the game we need to get all the stations ready, which in our case is 9 stations for the 9 AHHA skills. All the participants gather in one place from where they can’t see the stations. The first leader comes to them and blindfolds one participant (note: the participant will remain blindfolded during the whole game, never take the blindfold off!) The leader will lead the participant away from the 120
group to the first station. After the first station they go to the second, then the third station and so on. After they finished all the stations, the leader takes the blindfolded person to the final location, where the blindfolded person sits down on a chair and quietly waits for the others (he/she remains blindfolded). The leader goes back to the beginning location and takes another participant. Here are the descriptions of the sample stations and what the leader has to do. Please remember that these are example stations, feel free to think of new ones! 1. Aura – There is a light bulb and a candle next to each other. The leader tells the participant to feel the two objects, and then says “Feel these two objects. Both the light bulb and the candle give light. However the candle’s Aura is much better – it gives heat as well. What kind of person do you want to be: someone who only gives knowledge to others, or someone who gives knowledge, friendship, trust and love to others?” 2. Belief – This station if centered on belief in self. The leader leads the blindfolded person to the entrance of a huge empty hall, or to the edge of the forest or a large field. The leader asks the person to first whisper “I believe in myself.” Then the leader asks the participant to say in a normal voice “I believe in myself.” Finally the leader asks the participant to shout as loud as possible “I believe in myself!” 3. Calmness – The leader leads the participant to a seat with headphones. Very calm music should be playing in the headphones. The leader says “Relax. Let your thoughts flow freely. Feel the calmness in you.” and puts the headphones on 121
the participant. The leader waits for about 2 minutes while the participant enjoys the calmness. 4. Discipline – The leader leads the participant to a horizontal branch above the ground and guides the participant’s feet onto the branch. He/she says “Walk on this branch. It is much easier to walk on the ground, but if you have the determination and discipline to walk the higher path, you will learn much more, become a better person and accomplish your goals.” 5. Education – The leader leads the participant to a hammer, and gives it to him/her. He says “Education and knowledge are tools in your hand, just like this hammer. Sometimes you feel that you don’t need it, it is not worth carrying. The hammer can be useless for example in the dry season, but when the rainy season comes it is necessary for building a house to protect yourself and the others. The same way your education helps you in life, gives you new opportunities, and allows you to overcome obstacles.” 6. Fairness – The leader gives a stick and two buckets to the participant. The leader helps to put the stick on the participant’s shoulders with the buckets on the two sides. The leader slowly puts stones (or something quite heavy) in one of the buckets. That side will be very heavy. The leader asks the participant to walk like this. After a while the leader tells him/her to stop. He/she now takes out half of the stones from the bucket and puts them in the other bucket. The participant also has to walk like this. The leader asks “Isn’t it so much easier like this? This is fairness.” 122
7. Growth – The leader leads the participant to a small ball and a cube. The leader shows the participant that he/she should feel the two items. He says “Feel these different objects. Which is better? Which is nicer? We can’t always compare two very different things on the same scale. Ernest Hemingway once said: There is nothing great in being superior to others; true greatness is being superior to your past self. Instead of comparing yourself to others, compare yourself to your past self. That is true growth.” 8. Happiness – The leader leads the participant to a flower and gives it to him/her and lets him/her smell it. He/she says “Take this flower. Confucius once said: If every person could see the beauty of the world in a flower, the world would finally reach peace. Happiness can be found in many places, we just need to search for it.” The leader then gives a piece of fruit, for example a slice of banana, and says “Eat this fruit and enjoy it as much as possible. Try to really find the beauty of the taste.” 9. Humility – The leader leads the participant to a chair. There is a bowl of water and a cloth at the feet of the participant. The leader washes the feet of the participant and says “In the Bible Jesus Christ washed the feet of his disciples and said: I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet. So you also should wash one another’s feet. I have given you an example. You should do as I have done for you.” Eventually every participant will be sitting at the final location in a circle (still blindfolded!), waiting for the others to arrive. When everyone is
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there, the leaders take the blindfolds off the students and the moral and sharing can start. If there are more than 30 participants, multiples of the stations have to be made, otherwise the game would be too long and slow. Sharing and moral: If we want to have a really deep impact on the participants, we should prepare something at the final location. For example there can be a campfire, or there can be a small candle in front of everyone, or the participants can be standing in front of a beautiful view. When the blindfolds are taken off, the participants will be surprised and astonished and moved. One of the organizers should summarize the central ideas behind the experience and why it was important, maybe say a little speech. Then, based on the atmosphere and the goal of the game, the participants can share what it was like to go through the “blind journey”, and the leaders can share what it was like to lead blindfolded people. This is of course not obligatory, the main part of the experience is the journey itself, sharing is only important in some cases.
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2. Blue mango communication, role playing, decision making
2-40 (even number)
45 min + 20 min sharing
papers with the roles for everyone
Description: 1. We make pairs of the people. They should sit facing each other. 2. They decide who is person A and who is person B (every pair needs one person A and one person B). All the A people get a paper with the role A, and all the B people get the paper with the role B. 3. They should not show their paper to their partner, just read it and if they don’t understand something, ask the teacher (~ 15 min). The teacher makes sure that they understand their roles. 4. When a pair has read the roles, and understands the situation explained on the paper, they can start the discussion. They have ~30 minutes to decide about the blue mangos. Sharing and moral: Everybody comes together, and the teacher asks the pairs: -
Who has an agreement? Who has decided that one person gets all the blue mangos? 125
-
Who has decided that they share the mangos? Who has another agreement?
There is a solution for the situation!!! Person A needs the seeds of the mangos, while person B only needs the skin of the mangos, so they can both get what they want if they can understand and discuss their goals well. So, if some pairs find this solution, the teacher can ask them to explain it to the others, but if nobody finds this solution, the teacher can explain it to the students. Please remember that this game is mainly about practicing communication, not about finding the “one good solution.” Other solutions are good as well. The most important goal of this game is to learn to communicate well. Communication is essential when working with others. The two very important things of communication are: (1) to listen to others and (2) to say what is important for you, to represent your interest. These are the two basics for communication, but for good communication, we also need a good aura – we need to be able to tell our side of the story kindly, and not only hear what the other says, but also listen to it, and take others seriously. To reach our goal, we need to be friendly, nice, confident and determined. If we can’t treat others properly, we can’t discuss anything with them. In this game, we try to convince our partner, and we try to understand his/her goal. For this, we need to be nice and positive, and communicate clearly. Listening to others is a form of humility: we must realize that not only we are important, but others are equally important. Saying what we think is right requires confidence, belief in ourselves and good aura. This game also helps us understand something about fairness. If we can understand our goals well, and we can communicate them to others, and we also pay attention to others, and respect them and their goals, we might find the solution of the game. In real life also, we need to be clear about our goals, but we must not forget about others. We have to respect each other, pay attention to each other, and help each other. This way we can become a more complete person, and we can live in harmony and peace with other people. The roles: 126
ROLE OF A You are a Scientist for the “A Medicine Company”, an international company that produces medicine to cure rare diseases. Your company tries to fight against X-Disease. This disease is very dangerous and can cause baby abnormalities, both physical and mental. There is a huge emergency in the whole world. If X-Disease is not controlled quickly, probably a high percentage of the next generation will be mentally or physically damaged. They will all depend on their families and the society for many years. Economists are saying that the costs to care for these people will be great. The high taxes to pay this will destroy millions of families and cause economic crisis and large unemployment. Psychologists think that the emotional impact will touch almost every family, with terrible consequences. Your company did a lot of research on X-Disease and identified a medicine, X-Med, that will cure the disease. The medicine is produced from the seeds of the rare blue mango. This fruit is found in small numbers in Africa. The blue mango tree produces fruits once each year and the blue mango season is this month! The fruits for each year are sold to expensive restaurants for special soups. Last year’s fruit has been sold at a price of $15 per fruit. The only owner of blue mango trees lives in a small village in Africa. He doesn’t know that his blue mango is very important this year. You shouldn’t tell him it is very important! If he doesn’t know, he will sell to you at a similar price as last year’s price. The “A Medicine Company” will need all 10,000 of this year’s blue mango in order to cure the disease in the whole world. Half of the mango will be needed in Asia. 20% will be needed for South-East Asia. You have to get as many blue mangos as you can. Your company needs all of them! You can spend maximum $500,000 to get the blue mangos. There are competitors for the use of blue mango – a chemical company called the “B Company”. (Your company has a bad relationship with “B Company”.) You can compete with the “B Company” for the blue mangos, and you can pay as much as the owner of the blue mangos wants to get 100 % of the fruit. If “B Company” offers more money to the owner, then you should offer even more. You are flying to Africa to try to buy the blue mangos. On the airplane, you see that the person in the seat next to you is from the “B Company” and also wants to buy the blue mangos. You have 45 minutes before your airplane arrives to the airport. You have to convince this person that you need all the 10,000 blue mangos much more. If you can protect the interests of your company, you will be the next President of it! – a job that will pay you five times more than now.
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ROLE OF B You are a Chemist for the “B Chemical Company”, an international company that destroys insects that are dangerous to agriculture. Your company tries to fight against flying spiders. This insect is very dangerous for trees, and can destroy complete forests in some days or weeks. The flying spider is now in small numbers, but many more will be born in two months. If the forests are destroyed, the effects will be very serious. The ground will not be able to grow enough food, and people will not have enough water. The flying spider could also move into agricultural lands and cause serious destruction to rice. The flying spiders like to eat and destroy rice. The only way to stop the flying spiders is to spray infected forests with a special liquid, X-spray, which only “B Chemical Company” knows how to make. X-spray is made from the skin of the rare blue mango which is found in Africa. This fruit is found in small numbers in Africa. The blue mango tree produces fruits once each year and the blue mango season is this month! The fruits for each year are sold to expensive restaurants for special soups. Last year’s fruit has been sold at a price of $15 per fruit. The only owner of blue mango trees lives in a small village in Africa. He doesn’t know that his blue mango is very important this year. You shouldn’t tell him it is very important! If he doesn’t know, he will sell to you at a similar price as last year’s price. The “B Chemical Company” will need all 10,000 of the blue mango in order to destroy the flying spiders in the whole world. Half of the mango will be needed in Asia. 20% will be needed for South-East Asia. You have to get as many blue mangos as you can. Your company needs all of them! You can spend maximum $500,000 to get the blue mangos. There are competitors for the use of blue mango – a medicine company called the “A Company”. (Your company has a bad relationship with “A Company”.) You can compete with the “A Company” for the blue mangos, and you can pay as much as the owner of the blue mangos wants to get 100 % of the fruit. If “A Company” offers more money to the owner, then you should offer even more. You are flying to Africa to try to buy the blue mangos. On the airplane, you see that the person in the seat next to you is from the “A Company” and wants to buy the blue mangos as well. You have 45 minutes before your airplane arrives to the airport. You have to convince this person that you need all the 10,000 blue mangos much more. If you can protect the interests of “B Chemical Company” you will be the next President of it! – a job that will pay you five times more than now.
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3. Bus station decision making, reasoning, values, thinking
6-30
20 min
none
https://youtu.be/j1JZgtqDfVs Description: The teacher divides the play area into three parts: a neutral part in the middle and two sides. The middle part is the bus station and the two sides are two buses. In the beginning all the participants stand in the neutral part. The teacher reads two things and assigns the two side parts to these two things. The participants have to choose one side or the other and go there. For example the teacher will say “mathematics to the left” and “literature to the right”. The participants have to individually decide whether they would rather be on the bus of mathematics or on the bus of the literature and go there (the team doesn’t move together, each person decides by him/herself). Here are some examples for decisions: -
math or literature book or TV bike or motorbike grass or tree cook or eat mango or banana study or play night or day Monday or Sunday today or tomorrow
An important part of the game is that the teacher does not tell the students how they should make their 129
decision. The participants have to reason and think of arguments themselves why they choose one side or the other. Depending on how serious the teacher wants the game, he/she can give many “everyday thing” decisions, like the previously mentioned ones, or he/she can give more serious decisions, like “calmness” and “aura”, or other values. Of course even simple decisions, like “today or tomorrow” or “study or play” can have serious moral backgrounds. Sharing and moral: Usually this game involves making a lot of decisions, and if the teacher thinks sharing would be nice then it is worth doing it during the game, when the participants make their choices. (If we do sharing at the end, they forget what decisions they had to make and why they chose what they chose.) This game involves making many decisions – and we don’t know based on what we have to make these decisions! That’s why it is so difficult! No one is saying: “decide between grass and tree based on how strong they are” or “decide between grass and tree based on how useful they are”, etc. We have to think hard and strongly, because we have to figure out for ourselves how we should decide. This is what happens many times in real life. We might not always have guidance from people we respect, and we have to make serious decisions by ourselves, based on our own thoughts. It is something that we can practice in this little game. It is also very important to not just decide and go to a side, but also to know why you are standing on that side and why others are standing on the other side. Sometimes it is difficult to stand up for the things we like and we think are important, especially if everybody else chooses the other option. But we have to learn how to represent our values, our preferences, ourselves. So we can experience in this game how it feels when we are alone against the majority and how it feels to be on the side of the majority. Even though it is difficult to represent something that is not the majority’s opinion, it is very important. If we have the confidence to do that, our friends will respect us, and we can be very happy in our lives. 130
4. Catch each other trust, responsibility, team, belief in others
7-14
10-15 min
a chair or table (or something) high enough
https://youtu.be/D-G04nj2Zks Description: This is a team building game. One person from the team will stand on a tall chair or a table. He/she has to close his/her eyes and keep his/her body as straight and stiff as possible (it is important to keep the muscles stiff). The rest of the team gathers by the side of the table/chair and put their hands out. The person standing on top closes his/her eyes and slowly (SLOWLY!) falls back. The rest of the team catches that person softly. Please take care when playing this game! Someone can get hurt if not enough people are there to catch that person or if the falling person doesn’t fall straightly with his/her body stiffened. After one person has tried, the other team members can try as well.
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Sharing and moral: The moral of the game is that it is a great feeling if we can trust each other, if we have belief in others and from the other side if we can catch each other when we are falling. We learn that the members of the team have a great responsibility towards each other and that they have to pay attention to each other. Sharing is advised after this game. The participants should tell us about the experience of falling blindly. Did they feel safe? Were they afraid? The people who were catching should also share their experiences. Were they excited? Did they feel responsible for the falling person? The participants can of course also share anything they have in mind.
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5. Caterpillar teamwork, challenge, thinking together, working together
4-30
20-30 min
two buckets and something to carry water in
https://youtu.be/Xru6MUahnfQ Description: The group makes teams of 4-10 people (ideally 6). Each team stands in a line, and they receive some rope that they have to use to tie their feet together by their ankles. Each person’s right ankle is tied to his/her right neighbor’s left ankle. This way the whole team will be connected (like a caterpillar). The goal of the game is for the teams to bring water from one bucket to another bucket. The buckets are far away (so that the team has to move together to be able to reach the goal bucket). Each team receives a bowl that they can use to carry water from one bucket to the other. They can’t move the buckets themselves. If there is only one team playing, their goal is to do the task as quickly as possible. If there are more teams then it is a race to see which team finishes first. 133
Sharing and moral: Sharing is not necessary at the end of this game. The participants just practice thinking and working in a team. They need to communicate and make decisions quickly, and then work as fast as possible. If there is time for a quick sharing then the teams can highlight what they think was important for accomplishing the task.
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6. Compassion game compassion, empathy, self-investigation, fairness
5-10
20 min+ 30 min sharing
role-cards and questions
Description: We distribute role cards for every player and we explain to them that they will play the role that they have on their card. They should read and understand their role. They can’t talk to each other. If they have a question or they don’t understand something, they should ask the teacher. 1. You are the first son of a farmer. Your mother helps your father with the animals and the farm. You live in a small house with your parents, your 7 younger siblings and your 2 dogs. Your family is very poor. Sometimes your parents don’t even have money to buy food. You are 14 years old, and you help your parents and your siblings all day. 2. You are a 14 year old daughter of a doctor. Your mother also works at a hospital, as a nurse. You have an 18 year old sister who will go to university next year. Your parents can help your grandparents and your cousins with money. They are very clever and everybody in the village likes and respects your parents very much. 3. You are a 14 year old girl in a big family. You have 3 older and 4 younger siblings. Your father is a farmer, and your mother sells the vegetables that your father grows. Both of your parents are uneducated, but they want you and your siblings to study. They need all of you to help on the farm, but they also send you to school when they can. They don’t have money to send
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4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
you to special lessons but they can support your public school studies. You are a 14 year old American boy. You live in a big house with your parents and your brother. You go to high school and you have sport and music lessons in the afternoon. You like to watch TV and to play computer games. Your father is a businessman and your mother works as a math teacher. Your family has never had money-problems. You live in a big city with your two sisters and your parents. You are the first child in the family, the only boy. You are 14 years old. Your father works in a hotel and your mother is a cook in a nice restaurant for tourists. You go to a good school and you learn English and French. Your family has a computer at home. In the summer your family goes to the beach for 2 weeks every year. You are a 14 year old boy. Your father is a tuk-tuk driver and your mother sells cakes on the market. You are handicapped: you can’t move your legs and your family doesn’t have money to buy you a wheelchair. Your father sometimes takes you with him on his tuk-tuk. Your 3 sisters and one brother all help your mother making cakes and take care of the chickens and ducks. They go to public school. You are a 14 year old girl. You live in a small village with your father and your 3 younger brothers. Your mother died 4 years ago. Your father is a farmer and you and your brothers help him to grow vegetables and rice. You have to sell this rice and vegetables at the market, so you don’t have time to go to school. Also, you have to take care of your siblings because after your mother died your father became very sad. He doesn’t talk a lot and he hits you and your siblings sometimes if you don’t sell enough food in the market. You only went to school for 3 years, so you know how to read and write. You are a 14 year old orphan: Both your parents died in a catastrophe when you were only 2 years old. You survived the 136
catastrophe but you don’t remember the time before. You live in an orphanage with 40 other orphans. You like playing with the others but the teachers always scold you because you make too much noise. 9. You are a 14 year old girl, the smallest child in the family, you have 4 older siblings. Your parents divorced 3 years ago and they moved to different cities. You stay with your uncle. You don’t really like your uncle and your cousins. You should go to school every day, but you don’t like the school, so you often walk around the village and hang out with some friends in school time. 10. You are a 14 year old girl in a small village. You live with your family: your parents and your 4 siblings. You love drawing, and your drawings are very beautiful. Everybody who sees them says you are talented. You have a mobile and a nice bicycle. Your parents work in a shop, and you help them on the weekends. You go to public school. Everybody reads and understands his/her role. After that we ask them to stand in a line. They still can’t talk to each other! We explain that they will hear questions. If they think that their answer would be “yes” to the question they can step one step forward. If their answer is “no”, they have to stay in their place. (They have to think not about themselves, but about the role they are playing!) We read the questions one by one, leaving enough time to think and to decide if they have to step forward or not. We can tell them that if they are not sure if their answer is yes or no, they should just decide based on their feelings, their imagination. They should imagine their character. 137
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Does your family have a car? Do you have a lot of books at home? Do your parents want you to go to university? Will you have a good job? Will you earn much more money than your parents? If you don’t understand something, can your parents help? Can they explain it to you? Can you buy some new clothes and shoes every year? Do you often talk about the future at home with your family? Can you access internet every day? Does somebody in your family read the news? Do you live in a loving family? Do you travel with your family to a touristic place when you have holidays? When we are finished with all the questions, the students will stand in very different places. We ask them to look at the others’ position. Then, we form a circle to start the sharing. Even more than 10 people can play if we make more rolecards. The questions can also be changed.
Sharing and moral: Sharing is the most important part of this game. After the stepping forward part, some students will feel a lot of stress and tension, we need to help them talk it out and understand their anger and pain. Those who couldn’t step forward while others were going farther and farther probably feel it very unfair and they will feel angry. They have to understand that this feeling is natural, but we have to look forward and understand that some people start life with better conditions, more opportunities. Others have much more difficulties to achieve the 138
same goals. That’s why we all need to help each other and try to be fair to everyone. The students can understand through this game the differences between people. They can understand that in difficult conditions, improvement is more difficult too. And they can feel that it is a very bad and unfair feeling when they can’t go further because of their conditions. That’s why they should respect and help each other and try to understand others’ situations. Fairness doesn’t always mean that we should give the same amount of help to everyone: sometimes it means that we help more to those who need it more. If we have more (knowledge/ money/ food/ opportunities/ qualities) we should try to share some of it.
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7. Crocodile river team spirit, team decision, agility, responsibility, strategy
8-15
20 min
7 papers
https://youtu.be/K-eO6Bkt1Mo Description: We give the papers to the students and we tell them that they are a team, so they have to work together. We show them an area that will be the river. (It should be at least 3-4 meters wide.) They have to cross the river, but it is full of crocodiles, so it is very dangerous. If somebody’s foot touches the river, the crocodiles eat him/her. The papers that they have are magic papers. If they put them on the river they can step on them and the crocodiles can’t eat them. But the crocodiles can steal the papers too: if nobody touches a paper, the crocodiles steal it. The crocodiles can be the teacher with 1 or 2 students or 2-3 students. The goal of the team is to go through the river. If every member survives and can cross the river the team wins the game. If somebody is eaten by the crocodile then they have to start again because the goal is to get everyone to the other side! If the group can easily get across with 7 pieces of paper then the teacher takes 140
away a few papers, so that the group only has 5 papers, for example. Of course even less can be used, if the group is enjoying it. Sharing and moral: Sharing is not necessary. In this game the students can experience teamwork and responsibility. They have to cooperate, think about others and help each other to achieve their goal. They can experience that every member has big responsibility in a team. If someone doesn’t pay attention, the team can lose a paper, and they will have less chance to win the game. This means that they all have to focus and try to give their best. Also if we use less and less papers then we also experience growth – at first seven papers may seem difficult, but by the end maybe the group can do the task with two, or even one paper! They also have to think before acting. So they can understand that if they have a problem, they should first think and then act. If they just start acting without any strategy they won’t be able to win the game.
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8. Few feet team spirit, team decision, agility, strength
10-50
30 min
none
Description: We make equal teams of the players. One team should have 5-10 people. The goal of the teams is to go through an area with as few feet touching the ground as possible. They have 10-15 minutes to think and plan, and then every group tries to go through the area. The teacher counts the feet. If one foot touches the ground in the area (even if it is only one time) it counts! In one round the teams only have one chance to go through the area. The team that could go through the area with the fewest feet touching the ground wins the game. A few examples to clarify the counting of feet: if someone walks across the territory then he/she is using 2 feet. If someone hops over on one leg, then that only counts as one foot. If someone does a handstand and walks over on his/her hands then that is 0 feet. 142
Sharing and moral: Sharing is not necessary. In this game the students can learn how to work efficiently in a team. In a team, we can share the roles based on the qualities of the members. In this game for example the stronger people can carry the weaker people. They can experience that we should consider the member when giving the tasks. They have time to think and plan, so every member can participate in the decision-making. When they have decided about the plan, everybody has to realize the decision in a disciplined way if they want to win the game.
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9. Hot air balloon values, self-investigation, our priorities, decision making
2-30
40 min + 30 min sharing
paper and pen for everyone
Description: We sit in a circle and the teacher asks the students to write down 10 values that they consider very important in their lives. (Optional change: The 10 things can be also 10 people, 10 places, 10 virtues, etc.) They write the values on their paper without talking to each other or showing the paper to others. We can also tell them that they write this only for themselves; they will not need to show it to anyone if they don’t want to. They have 10-15 minutes to think about the values and choose 10 that they write down. If everyone has the 10 values on their papers, we can start the game. The teacher starts to tell a story: “We all get in a hot-air balloon. We are going to travel to a beautiful island on this nice hot-air balloon, but there is not enough space for us, so we need to leave back 2 things from our list to get in.” Now, the teacher asks the students to cross 2 things off their list, and write the number 1 and 2 next to those things. We can wait a few minutes to give enough time for the students. If everybody has made his/her choice (they don’t share it), we can continue telling the story: “We all got in the hot-air balloon, so we can start our journey. Close 144
your eyes and imagine the beautiful village that we can see from here, and the river with the trees and the cows… It is so nice to fly and see the little houses and people from here. But there comes the forest and we are too heavy, we can’t go any higher, and the high trees can stop us or damage the hot-air balloon. So we have to throw out 2 more things to get higher and escape from the high trees.” The teacher asks the students to cross 2 more things off their list and write the numbers 3 and 4 next to them. When everybody is finished, we continue the story: “We escaped from the high trees, good job everyone! Now we are very high, it is very nice here. We can see the forest and the different villages but we don’t see the people or the animals anymore. We are over a big road, a lot of cars and trucks and motorbikes are running between the villages. We are already quite far from our village; we can’t even see it anymore. What is that big thing? Oh, a mountain. We are getting closer and we can’t fly high enough. We need to throw away 1 more thing from the list.” The teacher asks the students to cross 1 more thing off their list, and write the number 5 next to it. “Oh, we almost reached the mountain and even though we are flying higher, it is not high enough. Everybody needs to throw away one more thing.” Probably the decision will be more and more difficult to make, so we can give them more time if they need it. Ask them to write the number 6 next to this value, and we can continue: “Well done, everyone, we escaped from the mountain; we are high enough to be safe. Now, we can see the sea from here. It is very beautiful! We can even see the beach and the palm trees. The big waves of the sea are so nice, and we can smell the salty and fresh smell 145
of the sea. But the weather, unfortunately, is not very nice. It is quite windy on this side of the mountain. It is very difficult to control the hotair balloon. We need to throw out one more thing!” The teacher asks the students to decide about throwing away one more thing from the list and write the number 7 next to it. Everyone has only 3 more things on the list. “Now we can control the hot-air balloon better, but the weather is getting worse and worse, and we are over the sea. We can still see the land from here, and also an island far away. We want to go there, that is our destination! But we are in a storm. The wind is very strong, and it’s raining heavily, and we see lightning everywhere. We hardly see anything; we are just trying to fight the storm, but we are too heavy again, because everything is wet! So, we need to throw one more thing away.” The teacher asks the students to cross 1 more thing off their list, and write the number 8 next to it.” The storm is over and we survived! But the hot-air balloon is seriously damaged, so we are losing height. The island is only a few kilometers away, but we won’t reach it like this, so we have to throw away one more thing from our list.” The students have to cross off one of the two things left on the list, and write the number 9 next to it. We can finish the story: “We got a little higher, and this way we are able to reach our destination. The island is so beautiful, and we can land smoothly on the ground. The people of the island are waiting for us, and they are very happy we arrived. We are very happy too, we are safe now.” (Of course, we don’t need to follow this story word by word, the teacher can change it and tell the story with his/her own words. We also need to use words that our class understands.) Sharing and moral: Sharing is a really important part of this game! If we don’t have enough time for sharing it is better to choose another game, because this game can’t be over without sharing. We can ask the students to look over their list and check the order of the values. Was it easy or difficult to throw away some values? Which values were the last ones, and which decisions were the most difficult to make? What is the value that they kept until the end? Was it more 146
and more difficult? How did they feel when they had to throw away positive values? If someone doesn’t want to share, we shouldn’t force him/her. But we can motivate the students by the questions and by reacting in a positive way to their thoughts and thanking them for sharing. This game is about our values, and about what we consider the most important things in life. It helps us understand ourselves more and it makes us think about our life. There is no good or bad solution, everybody is different and our values are different too. We need to know ourselves and accept others. Reflection is a very important tool, we should practice it. This game helps us to reflect consciously about life and about ourselves.
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10. Human chairs team spirit, responsibility, fun
10-20
10 min
none
https://youtu.be/C7a2v5abyMs Description: The game is very short and easy: we all have to form a small circle, turn left and go as close to our neighbors as possible. The teacher tells everyone that we are going to sit down on each other’s knees. He/she explains that we have to sit down slowly and at the same time! If everybody understands, he/she counts back and we all sit down on each other’s knees. If nobody falls down, we can stand up again at the same time. If this goes well, the teacher can tell the students to walk in the sitting position at the same time. Sharing and moral: Sharing is not necessary. In this game we can understand our personal responsibility in a team in a funny way. If somebody doesn’t do it right, he/she can cause the whole team to fall down. So everybody has to sit down, stand up and walk with the team. It is all about fairness: if everybody supports the next person the game will work, but if someone doesn’t help his/her neighbor, we all fall down. We are responsible for each other and if we believe in others and trust them, we can experience that they support us too. 148
11. Journey into a story Method, courage, adventure, story, self-reflection, values
15-80 + helpers
30-90 min + sharing
requires serious preparation; nighttime, darkness; a long path; candles/small lights; other requirements are story dependant;
Description: This game is actually a method used to test and improve courage, pass on values, insight, life lessons, and in general spiritual things, or just to have a fun evening! The method can be used in many different ways to teach many different things, be creative with it! For children it can especially be used just to have fun and test courage. Note: this game can be taken to the extreme and be turned into a courage test by not focusing on the story and only trying to scare the participants. That version can also be fun and is a real test of bravery! In this game there are participants and “actors”. The actors will create a path with stations on it. Most of the actors will be situated at the stations and will be acting. The participants will go from station to 149
station through the path, and will enjoy the acting and interact with the actors where it is necessary. The whole activity should take place at nighttime, when it is dark. The participants will follow a path of small candles or small lights, and they should be in groups of 2 or they should go alone. The stations are situated along this path; each station should be near a candle or light so that it is visible. In summary: the game takes place at night, participants go alone or in small groups on a path that is made of small candles. From time to time the participants encounter a station, where an actor says something and interacts with the participants, and then the participants continue on their journey. In the beginning all the participants go to a starting location, where they will wait for their turn (at the starting location they can play games or sing songs while waiting). One of the actors takes the first group of participants (2 people) and brings them to the beginning of the path. He/she tells them the instructions: “Follow the lights, be brave, etc.” The first participant group begins following the path. As previously described, they will find some stations along the way, where the story unfolds. They keep going until they finally reach the 150
end. Here they should wait for the others. The point of this game is to put the participants into a story. They must really feel that they have become part of a story. In order for this to happen, the organizers (the actors) must figure out a story before starting the game. They must then figure out what kind of stations there will be (examples will be given later), and finally decide who will play which role, who will act what at which station. This requires great preparation from the organizers. Ideally the actors will also try to dress like their roles. The path that the participants go on should also be adventurous – possibly on a (safe) forest path or on some empty fields, where they will not be disturbed by passing by people who are not playing. An example: we want to teach the participants about the value of helping others and of thinking for themselves. We will put the participants in a story where a brother is searching for his sister, who was taken by a gang of evil men. 1. The brother is the first actor and asks the participants to follow the trail of lights that the gang left behind them. The participants start their way. 2. After about 2 minutes of walking, they meet an old woman (an actor dressed as an old woman), who asks them what they are searching for? She says that nobody ever walks that way, but a few hours ago there were four men on horses going that way (she shows the correct way). The participants continue on their path. 3. They soon get to the second station, where they see an injured soldier, who asks for some water and medicine that can be found nearby. The participants find the medicine and water. When they give it to the soldier, the soldier gets better and he tells them that he tried to stop the gang of men and the woman, but he couldn’t. 4. The participants continue on the path of light and at the third station they find a farmer who tells them a short story about the brother that they are helping. In the story he tells them 151
5.
6.
7.
8.
about how the brother is actually not such a good man, and he recently took money from innocent farmers. The participants go on and meet a crying woman. They (should) try to comfort the woman. The woman tells them that she was the best friend of the sister. She tells them how sad she is that the sister was taken. She also tells them how the sister was actually unhappy at home and how the brother beat her recently. The brother also won’t let her marry the man she loves, and wants her to marry a richer man so he can get some of the money. The woman tells them to please make sure the woman is safe, and sends them forward on the path of lights. The participants continue on their journey and at the next station they meet a lonely soldier. The lonely soldier tells them they should turn around, because they are getting close to the land of the gangsters. The participants tell the lonely soldier that they are searching for the sister. The lonely soldier tells the participants that he is also worried about the sister, but he knows it will be much better for her with these men. He says that he thinks the sister wanted to be taken because she hated living with her brother. He tells the participants that they should go on, but to be careful! If any gangsters or soldiers try to harm them they should shout the password: “SOMNAT!” He tells them to keep going. The participants keep going, and while they are walking in the dark some scary men jump out of the bushes and behind trees and scream at them and tell them to stop! If the participants say the password, the scary men go back into hiding. The participants continue, until they get to the next station, where … etc.
The story goes on like this: the participant keep meeting new people and get to know more about the story. They finally get to the sister, who tells them that she actually wanted to escape from her brother because he was evil! She asked the gang of men to help her, and they did! 152
As you can see, this experience requires many actors who help prepare the journey, but it can be a very good experience for the participants if it is done properly. Participants are usually sent in pairs in this game, so they don’t give up or become too scared. Also it is nice to make pairs of people who are not best friends! This is a very good opportunity to bond with new people, to make new strong relationships. Note: when we make a story we usually like to include a part that is scary and frightening a little bit – it really make it memorable for the participants. Sharing and moral: The sharing and moral of this game depends strongly on what kind of story and stations there are. The organizers should decide whether they want to have a common sharing at the end or not, and what they want to talk about.
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12. Just hanging endurance, calmness, strength, self-control
5-20
10-40 min
somewhere to hang from
Description: It is advised to play this game with boy and girls separately, because it requires competing with physical strength and endurance. All the participants go to the place where the game will take place. At this place there is something to hang from, e.g. a strong tree branch. The participants will hang from the tree branch one at a time (or if there are many people playing, 2 or 3 people can hang at the same time). The participants have to hang from the branch for as long as possible – only their hands can touch the branch. The teacher measures the time duration that the participants are able to hang. The person who can hang on the longest is the winner. Important: while one person is hanging from the branch, all the other people can do anything to disturb him/her, except for touching that person! It is not allowed to touch or throw anything at the hanging person! So the others can make funny faces, they can tell jokes or funny stories, or just laugh. This makes it harder for the person to hang from the branch.
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Sharing and moral: Sharing is not important after this game. The participants learn that their self-control is very important. In this game the key element is not strength, but endurance and self-control. Most of the people fall down because they think they are tired, but with enough discipline they can keep on hanging and maybe have the best time! Other people hear the jokes and funny stories that the others are telling and they laugh and fall down. They also need more self-control, discipline and calmness in order to keep hanging, even though it is difficult! In life we will also have difficult situations when it is easier to give up, but it is not the right path. We must keep working despite the difficulties. Others will try to tell us that we should stop and give up, but we have to keep trying if know we are doing the correct thing!
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13. Labyrinth tag working in a team, discipline, fun
20-100
15-30 min
none
https://youtu.be/K3QXBFw1-ZM Description: The group stands in straight rows next to each other, except for two people, who will be chasing each other. Everyone in the rows should raise their hands to a horizontal position, and the hands of neighbors should touch, they should overlap a little bit. There is one game leader; this can be the teacher for example. The game leader tells everyone to face forward and raise their hands to a horizontal position. Now there should be corridors between the people. The two people who are not standing in the rows and will be chasing each other should go to two far corners of the “labyrinth”. The game starts and one person tries to catch the other. If he/she is caught, then the roles change. The only rule is that they must pretend that the raised arms are the walls of the labyrinth, so they can’t run through those. During the game, the teacher can shout “Change!” at any time. If the teacher shouts this, then everyone rotates a quarter of a circle, the labyrinth rearranges. Now again there should 156
long corridors, but they are arranged in another direction than before. The runners continue to try and catch/escape from the other, while not running through the walls. The game continues this way. From time to time the teacher should ask the runners to choose one person each that they change places with, this way they can try out what it’s like to be part of the labyrinth and the new people can try running in the labyrinth. Sharing and moral: This game does not require a large common sharing session. At the end of the game the teacher can emphasize how well the group can perform together in a team if they are disciplined and listen to their leader. By working together they can create a very fun and challenging game for themselves.
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14. Let’s build empathy empathy, tolerance, cooperation, self-investigation
6-40
40 min+ 20 min sharing
sticky papers with qualities on them
Description: The teacher sticks a paper with a quality on the forehead of every student. The students can’t see their own quality, but they can see everyone else’s quality. The teacher tells them that they shouldn’t tell anyone his/her quality. (Some examples for qualities: friendly, clever, neat, boring, educated, humble, arrogant, aggressive, helpful, good leader, kind, mean, slow, messy, distracted, stupid, positive attitude, strong, beautiful, selfish, wise, fast, experienced, angry, lazy, weak, lucky, lovable, smart, powerful, excellent, punctual, precise, reliable, respectful, straight, rude, cooperative, fair, unfair, funny, happy, sad, lonely, empathetic, ugly, romantic, smiley) If everyone has one paper on his/her forehead, the teacher explains to the students that they will have to treat each other as if the quality on their forehead would be true. So, for example if someone’s paper says “lazy”, everybody has to treat him/her as if he/she would be really lazy. They have to tell him/her to hurry up, to do something, to move. Or if someone’s paper says “clever”, everybody has to ask that person for advice, and accept his/her ideas. But they should never tell the person his/her quality.
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If everybody understands these rules of the game, the teacher can tell the task: the students have 30 minutes to build a nice castle in the middle of the room/place where they are. They can use all the objects that they find in the room. During this time the teacher can tell them sometimes that they shouldn’t forget about the qualities! When the time is up, we can sit down in a circle and start the sharing. Sharing and moral: We can start the sharing by asking the students if they know what the paper says on their forehead. They can guess and then see their paper. They can share how they felt about being treated like a lazy/clever/… person. The students should understand that everybody is different and we have different qualities. If somebody is slow thinker or weak it doesn’t mean that he/she is a better or worse person than others. We should try to understand others, help them and treat everybody nicely. Empathy should be part of our aura. We also need to know that everybody can change, so a negative quality can be improved. We have to work on our weaknesses and help others to find and improve theirs. Also we should always treat others as we want to be treated. We can also ask the students about the castle. How could they cooperate? Do they like it? Was it difficult to build it? They can share their experience about the teamwork and cooperation.
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15. Light ring teamwork, communication, challenge, paying attention to each other, thinking together
4-10
10 min
a roll of tape or a very light stick
https://youtu.be/e-X9ORkfuSI Description: The group gets a roll of tape (or a very light stick). This will be the light ring. The rule is that everyone in the team can only touch the light ring with one finger, and must touch it with one finger throughout the game. The goal of the team is to lower the roll from chest-height to the ground, without the roll falling off the fingers. If somebody stops touching the ring then the team has to start over! Sharing and moral: Sharing is not necessary, but it can be done if the team feels like sharing their experiences. The game is mostly about being able to solve a problem in a team, and paying attention to each other. We need to think and act as a team, never forgetting the others. This requires great aura, humility and fairness.
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16. Merchant game growth, thinking, team decision making, rationality
30-100
60-90 min
pieces of paper, pens, large space; requires moderate preparation
Description: The game is about teams of merchants trading goods (products) at different markets in order to make a profit. The merchants can, however, be attacked by bandits, who can steal their money. The goal of the game is for the merchant teams to get as much money as possible. The game has three types of players:
Markets – One market is one person. The markets don’t move during the game. They stay in one place and they buy and sell products at a fix price to the merchants. Merchants – The merchants are the main players of the game. There are teams of merchants of about 3-5 people. They move together from market to market in order to buy at low prices and sell at high prices. They try to avoid the bandits. Bandits – The bandits don’t buy and sell anything, they just catch merchants sometimes and try to take their money by playing a game of rock-paper-scissors with them (they take 50% of the money if they win 3 times in rock-paper-scissors). 161
The game has 7 rounds, and each round is a fix length of time, let’s say 10 minutes. In the beginning of the game the markets all receive a piece of paper from the organizers that has the prices of about 10 products (e.g. rice, fish, chicken, horse, pig, wood, iron, etc.) for each of the seven rounds (see the picture for an example). The prices at each market should be different for all products in all rounds! The markets all fold their paper so that only the first round can be seen. The markets all go to their places. The locations of the markets should be random, and they shouldn’t be too close to each other, it should take maybe 1-2 minutes to walk from one market to the other. One round will take 10 minutes. At the beginning of each round they fold the paper again so that the next round’s prices can be seen. The organizers choose two or three bandits. This will be the bandit team – they always stay together and move together. The bandit team can go anywhere, except they can’t go too close to a market. They have to stay at least 10 meters far from the markets, so they don’t disturb merchants who are buying and selling at the markets. If a bandit catches one person from one team, then the bandit team and that merchant team will “duel”. One bandit and one player from that merchant team play rockpaper-scissors, until one of them wins three times. If the bandit wins, then the bandits take half of the merchant’s money. Note: the bandits only take money; they don’t 162
take any products from the merchants! The merchant teams are teams of 3-5 people. In the beginning they receive a piece of paper from the organizers, where they will have written what products they have and how much money they have. In the beginning the merchants should start with 10 units of money. Every time they buy or sell something at a market, the market crosses out the previous amount and writes the new amount of money and products. If the merchants get attacked by bandits and lose half of their money, then the bandits have to cross off the previous amount of money and write the new amount. In general the merchants don’t have a pen, so always the markets and the bandits will write the new balance on the sheet. To summarize the game (from an organizational point of view): There will be 7 rounds of the game; each round will be 10 minutes long. At the beginning of each new round, the main organizer will shout or blow a whistle or somehow give a signal so that everyone knows it’s the next round. When this happens the markets change their prices to the current round’s prices. The markets buy and sell about 10 different products, that have different prices in different rounds, and each market has different prices (even in the same round). The markets need to be given these price tables at the beginning of the game. There should be about 7-12 markets in the game, depending on how many people are playing. The merchants should be in teams of 3-5 people. In the beginning, the merchants only need one empty paper per team, with a column for their products and a column for their money, and “10” written in the money column (see picture), since that’s how much money they start with. The game goes on for 7 rounds, and at the end all the merchants and bandits and markets gather together. The 163
merchant teams compare how much money they have, and the team with the most money wins the game. Sharing and moral: Sharing is not required after this game. The moral of the game is that growth is important and achievable if you pursue it actively, and growth is also fun! We can experience how we have to act if we have a good opportunity, for example how we have to buy products when their price is low. We also learn a lot about working in a team. The teams in this game always have to stay together, think together and decide together. This requires good communication and aura.
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17. Number War team spirit, cooperation, agility, speed, strategy
20-100
2-3 hours
papers with numbers that the players can put on their forehead
Description: We need a nice big area with trees or other obstacles for this game. We make two teams. They will fight against each other. We give the papers with numbers to the teams. Everybody will put one paper on his/her forehead. The paper on the forehead should be different color for the teams (for example: one team white, the other team yellow). This is important because they need to see from far if the other person is with them or against them. We explain the rules together but after that each team goes to their hospital. They put a paper on every player’s forehead and when the teacher shouts “start”, they start the game. The two hospitals have to be at least 100 meters from each other (if they are even farther then the game is even better). The players can only go to their hospital. It is forbidden to enter the other team’s hospital! The goal of both teams is to “kill” as many players from the other team as they can. In the game if somebody reads the number of another person and shouts it to him/her, he/she “kills” that person. This means that the dead person has to take his/her number off his/her forehead and go back to the hospital. There, he/she waits 5 minutes and then 165
he/she gets a new number and goes back to play. Each player has only 3 lives, so after using 3 numbers, he/she has to stay at the hospital until the end of the game. The players can climb trees, hide behind trees, bushes or each other, cooperate with the teammates, tell each other any information while they are alive, but they can’t cover their forehead with their own arm or hand or any object that they carry (no books or hats, etc!). Also they can’t share any information while they are dead! If everybody is dead from one of the teams, the other team wins the game. If the time is up, we can stop the game, and count how many people are alive. The team with more people alive wins. Sharing and moral: Sharing is not necessary after this game. In this game the students can develop various skills. To win the game they need to have a good strategy, they need to cooperate and help each other. They can also develop their sense of fairness, because they all need to obey the same rules, and nobody can check them all the time. So they need to be fair and obey the rules by themselves.
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18. Quality market values, self-investigation, communication, cooperation, compromise
10-30
40 min + 30 min sharing
small pieces of paper and twenty grains of rice per person
https://youtu.be/RlwFLpGa_9M Description: The teacher explains to the students that they are all in a market, but in this market we can’t buy food or clothes, but human qualities! So, we are in a quality-market and we are trying to buy qualities for ourselves. The qualities (for 25 people) can be for example: friendly, clever, neat, boring, educated, humble, arrogant, aggressive, helpful, good leader, kind, mean, slow, messy, distracted, stupid, positive attitude, strong, beautiful, selfish, wise, fast, experienced, angry, lazy, weak, lucky, lovable, smart, powerful, excellent, punctual, precise, reliable, respectful, straight, rude, cooperative, fair, unfair, funny, happy, sad, lonely, empathetic, ugly, romantic, smiley The teacher will be the seller. He/she has a lot of grains of rice, everyone else has only 20. This will be the money that we can use in the quality-market. The students 167
have some time to look at the qualities and think about which qualities they want to buy. If they want a positive quality, they will pay with the rice, and when they want to buy negative qualities, the seller will pay to them. When we start the game, the teacher can propose to sell a quality. For example: “Who would like to buy “friendly” for 8 grains? Who would pay more to get it?” The students can bargain, and whoever proposes the highest price will buy the quality from the seller. The students have only 20 grains of rice, but they can get more by buying negative qualities. When the teacher proposes to sell a negative quality, he/she can say: “Who wants to take “messy” for 10 grains? Who would take it for even less grains?” The students can bargain and the student who proposes the lowest price will get the quality and that many grains of rice! The game is over when all the qualities are sold, or nobody wants to buy any more qualities. Sharing and moral: The sharing part is maybe the most important part of this game. After buying all these qualities, the students can see what they have. The teacher can ask the students if they are happy with the qualities they have. Also it is very interesting to ask them if they think these qualities are really the ones they consider important in their lives. Everyone can share what qualities he/she has, and how he/she feels about them. It is important to tell the students that there is no best quality. Everyone is different and we all need to improve ourselves every day.
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This game shows us also very clearly, that nobody is perfect. The teacher can talk with the students about this topic. Was it easy to accept a negative quality? Is it easy in real life to face our real negative qualities? The teacher can tell the students that everybody has negative qualities, but if we know ourselves and we face these weaknesses, we can work on them and get better and better every day. If the atmosphere is nice, we can also talk about the importance of improving ourselves and about growth. Nobody is born with only positive qualities! We have to know ourselves (this is a long process, maybe it takes our whole life) and if we know our positive and negative qualities we can try to be better every day. If we have time and the students seem to be open to it we can ask them to think about their real positive and negative qualities. We can ask them to write these qualities down on their paper (we tell them that they won’t need to tell or show it to anyone, it is only for them!) and think about which qualities they could work on. We can ask them to chose one negative quality and think about how to change it. They can even write a little plan, a decision on the paper. For example: I am very lazy. “This week I will try to help others even if they don’t ask for help and I will do all my homework.” They don’t need to share these decisions, only if someone wants to share.
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19. Rope path courage, adventure, confidence, calmness, values
10-50
30-90 min
requires moderate preparation; a lot of rope; paper; blindfolds if it is daytime
Description: The rope path is a method for giving experiences to participants. It can be used in many ways, so use it creatively! The game takes place at night, when it is dark. Before the game begins, the organizers create a rope path by connecting trees with ropes at about body height. The rope path should be in an area where there are some obstacles, like bushes, branches, some trees and little ups and downs in the ground, but the obstacles should not be impossible to cross. At some points in the rope path there should be “stations”. At a station, there should be a small candle and a piece of paper with something on it. This can be a quotation, a short story, or a picture with some words. These should make the participant think about something, such as internal values or morals. When the rope path is ready, all the participants go to the beginning location. From here they will go one by one to the beginning of the rope path. The organizers tell them the instructions and let them start their journey on the path. The organizers should wait a little before sending the next person, so the first and the second person don’t meet each other on the path. The participants have to follow the rope path by holding the rope with their hands. They will not be able to see anything, so they have to be careful on their journey. When they arrive at a candle, they have to read what’s on the paper. They then put the paper back and continue on the rope path. They will go through the whole path and all the 170
stations and they will arrive at the end. There they join all the other participants who have already finished. At the final location it is advised to do something together when everyone has arrived, e.g. read a text together or say prayers together. This gives the experience a nice closing ceremony. Alternatively the game can be played during the daytime but then the participants need blindfolds and they can’t read any paper. If we play during the day, the game can still be fun but it reduces the spiritual value of the game. Sharing and moral: The sharing and moral of this game depends on what papers the organizers placed at the stations. It can be about some morals, values, religious things, etc. Whatever the moral of this game may be, it requires a lot of courage and confidence to go through the rope path in the dark.
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20. Sinking ship communication, empathy, team decision, humility, aura
4-8 or more
40-60 min + 10-20 min sharing
character sheets or story sheets
Description: The group (4-8 people) sits down together. If there are more people playing then make more groups of 4-8 people. Each person will receive a paper with a short story on it and a list of characters. The story says that there are 8 people on a sinking ship. The group has to decide together which 3 people they are going to save, and which person they will maybe save, maybe not. The other 4 people that they leave on the ship will die. The story and the list of characters can be seen here. Alternatively we can only give the students 8 character sheets (see pictures) and tell them the situation verbally. The following 8 people are on a ship. Unfortunately, the ship is sinking. There is an uninhabited island on the horizon (uninhabited = no people live there). There is only one emergency boat on the ship. The emergency boat can carry 3 people safely. There is also a small rubber boat that can carry 1 person. The rubber boat is not safe: there is a high chance that the rubber boat will sink, because there is a hole in it. There is no time to try to find holes in the rubber boat and to fix it. So 3 people 172
can get to the uninhabited island, 1 person will maybe get there and 4 people will die. Your task is to decide who will get on the safe emergency boat (3 people), and who will get on the unsafe rubber boat (1 person). The people that stay on the sinking ship will die, because there are many hungry man-eating sharks in the water. Make a decision together with your group. You have 40 minutes to decide. Here you can read what we know about the 8 people: 1. Cook: He is 20 years old. He spent the last 2 years working far away from his girlfriend, to earn enough money to be able to marry her. He is travelling now to propose to her. He has negative thinking and is always angry. He has a good knife with him. 2. Retired soldier: He is 60 years old. He doesn’t talk much. He is very experienced, but he has some problems with his memory, he sometimes forgets things. He has a box of matches and a pack of cigarettes with him. 3. Mother: She is 19 years old. She is the wife of the scientist. They are on holidays. They have a baby together, now the baby is sick: he has a little fever. The mother is a hard worker. She carries the baby everywhere. 4. Scientist: He is the husband of the Mother, they are on holidays. He is 25 years old. He is creative and smart, but also very lazy and a slow thinker. He has 10 meters of rope with him. 173
5. Monk: He is 40 years old, he is wise. The others trust him and listen to him. He has a first aid kit with him. 6. Rich man: He is 43 years old. He loves animals. His wife died a year ago. He has 10 000 dollars with him and he has a LOT of money at home. He is cowardly and would pay any amount of money to survive. 7. Teacher: She is 34 years old. She is married, but there are some serious problems in her marriage, she is thinking about divorcing her husband. They have 4 children together. She started medical school 16 years ago, but she stopped after 1 year and became a teacher instead. She cares for others. She is nervous and she is afraid of the dark. She has a gun with 10 bullets. 8. Farmer: He is 28 years old. He takes care of his 3 siblings, because their parents died in an accident 5 years ago. He is the oldest of his siblings. He is friendly and strong. He has a radio that doesn’t work. Some important rules for the game: the characters take their items with them. The character and the item go together always! For example the farmer’s item is his radio that doesn’t work. If the farmer gets on the emergency boat, he will take his radio with him. The characters can’t exchange their items! Also note that the mother’s item is her baby, and she will take the baby with her on the boat.
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The teacher should give the class about 5-10 minutes to read the whole paper, and then the game starts. They have 40 minutes to decide. In the end the teacher asks the groups for a list. Sharing and moral: Sharing is important in this game. Please ask the students to share their experiences. Were they happy with the result? Who would have been happier with another result? Who felt that the others did not listen to his/her arguments enough? This game is about communication and making a decision, while remaining calm. The two very important things of communication are: (1) to listen to others and (2) to say what is important for you, to represent your interest. These are the two basics for communication, but for good communication, we also need a good aura – we need to be able to tell our side of the story kindly, and not only hear what the other says, but also listen to it, and take others seriously. Listening to others is a form of humility: we must realize that not only we are important in the team, but others are equally important. Saying what we think is right requires confidence, belief in ourselves and good aura. In this game the group had to practice good communication: everyone had to say who they think should go on the ship, and why that person should go. Everyone also had to listen to others’ opinions on who should be taken. As a group, they reasoned together and tried to find who should be saved and why. Some people may have felt left out, or may have felt that others didn’t listen to them – this isn’t good! The members of the group have to try to listen to everyone. Also some people may have been quiet during the whole time, even though the others would have listened to him/her – this also isn’t good, because the group can’t benefit from that person’s ideas. Everyone needs to have enough confidence to participate in the group thinking, and everyone needs enough humility to allow everyone else to feel good when participating. Always remember: there are many advantages of thinking together as a group; if we don’t communicate well, then we waste these advantages, and we might as well be working alone.
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21. Sock challenge team spirit, team decision, agility, responsibility, strategy
12-20
20 min
about 8 pairs of socks (or something else); a timer; a bag
https://youtu.be/SlZLn-GRjV0 Description: This game can be played with socks that are bundled up. It can also be played with any other small item that can easily be thrown, such as small balls. Soft items are preferred, because it can easily happen that someone doesn’t pay attention and gets hit with something. The teacher asks the group to stand or sit in a circle. The teacher has all the socks in a sack or bag. He/she takes out one and passes it to one person in the circle. That person has to throw it to any other person in the circle except the teacher. The next person can also throw it to anyone, except for the people who already had it. The people keep passing on the sock, so that in the end everyone had it once. The last person has to put it back into the bag. The previous throwing around defined an order of the people in the circle. The teacher takes one sock out of the bag and to passes it to the same person as before. Afterwards, the teacher will take out the next sock as well and pass it. So now all the socks will be thrown at the same 176
time! The socks will arrive to the last person and he/she has to put them back into the bag. The game continues and the group tries to pass the socks around as fast as possible. The teacher motivates them to do faster and better. If someone drops a sock, they can’t pick that back up. So after each round they can count how many socks arrived back successfully and how long it took. Up to here this game is a great team building game and can be played many times. If we want to go to the next level and make the game more challenging then the teacher tells the students that there are only three rules of the game: 1. All the socks have to be passed around in this exact same order as before. 2. If a sock falls down it can’t be picked up. 3. In the end they need to all be in the bag in the teacher’s hand. The students try to do the exercise as fast as possible. The teacher should measure the time it takes to do the exercise and tell it to the group. The group should try to do it faster and faster. If there are more groups of people playing at the same time they can race with the time! Every time the group finished, the teacher will tell them how long it took, and the teacher will also tell them that they can do faster! Here is the secret: the teacher should always tell them that they can be faster… if they stay in the original circle. Why? Because there were 3 rules of the game, and they did not prohibit changing places, or moving around, or doing any other thing! So if they want they can move around! Please, don’t tell this to the group beforehand. They should start thinking by themselves how they can accomplish the task quicker! 177
Once the group tries to move around and try new ways, the teacher should still motivate them to try to be even faster. The group will try more and more ways to do it faster, and in the end they will be very quick. In the end they should compare their last time with their first time, and be happy with the progress they made. Sharing and moral: The beginning of this game is just about teamwork, growth and fun, when the students try to pass the socks faster and faster. But soon they reach their limit in speed. At this point the group has to really start thinking and be creative and brave. In order to be even faster they will change how they accomplish the task. This is real growth: not only doing something better, but completely changing how you do it! In many parts of life we try to be better and better using one method, but we should also try new methods, that could be much better in its foundations! For example someone at home can try to use less and less water, because it is expensive. The person uses a little less for bathing, a little less for washing clothes, doesn’t waste so much water, etc. This is good, because the person is trying to grow, become better, use only as much water as necessary. However, if the person thinks, and tries to be creative, he/she can realize that if he/she would not only buy water, but also collect rainwater, he/she could use much more water than before at the same price! He/she could, instead of focusing on using less water for everything, try to focus on building a good rain collection system that collects a lot of rainwater. That is a stronger growth, an innovative growth.
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22. Spider’s web team spirit, cooperation, helping each other
8-15
20-30 min + 5 min sharing
rope; requires minor preparation beforehand
Description: The teacher explains to the students that they are a team. The team’s goal is to go through the spider’s web, but there are two rules that they have to keep in mind: 1. Everyone has to go through a different hole on the web, so every hole can be used only once. 2. Nobody can touch the web! They have to cooperate, work together. The teacher makes sure they understand that their goal is that everybody gets through the web without touching it. If somebody touches the web, the whole team has to start over.
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Sharing and moral: The sharing can be short after this game. We should reflect about how to work in a team: everybody has to cooperate! If the people don’t think and work together, the team will not win the game. So we should ask them how they felt about working together, helping others and being helped. We can underline that in our whole life, we can decide if we want to cooperate and live in harmony with the people around us, or we only want to focus on ourselves not respecting and considering others.
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23. Stick together team spirit, thinking of others, discipline, humility for a leader, practice makes perfect
8-50
20-30 min + 10 min sharing
as many straight sticks as people
https://youtu.be/OouuXP9hWPk Description: Everyone stands in one large circle (there should be 1 m between neighboring people). Everyone holds their stick vertically in front of them, so that one end is touching the ground. The sticks should be at least 1 m long, they can be brooms, mops, plastic or wooden sticks, etc. The teacher is in the middle of the circle and he/she explains the rules: 1. If the teacher claps one time, everyone lets go of their stick, moves to the right, and catches their neighbor’s stick (before it falls). 2. If the teacher claps two times, the same happens, except everyone moves to the left, not to the right. 3. If the teacher claps three times, everyone turns around in his/her place and catches his/her own stick again, before it falls. The rules are simple, but the exercise can be difficult to do. The teacher should only use the “one clap” in the beginning, so everyone can practice moving to the right. If the group is able to move to the right well enough (i.e. almost no sticks fall to the ground when the teacher 181
claps), then the teacher should introduce the “two claps”. The group should practice moving left a well. If both the right and left movements are going well, then the teacher should try three claps. The game should go on until the group is very good at it. The teacher should introduce a new rule at any time during the game: everyone should say “AHHA!!” when they catch a new stick. This strengthens the team spirit! The teacher should clap at a faster and faster speed, and see if the group can become better and follow. After a while the teacher should ask one of the students to try the role of the clapping leader. A few students can try for 3-4 minutes each. Sharing and moral: At the end of the game everyone can stay where they are and they can share what they learned. First the teacher should ask what it was like to be part of the circle: what did they learn during the game? What was the key to success? In this game each team member has to pay attention to other members, because if everyone only pays attention to catching the next stick, the game will be very difficult. If everyone pays attention that his/her stick is very vertical and will stand still for a long time, so it is easy for the next person to catch, then the game will be easy. This is a form of fairness, and we must realize that in real life if we all try to help each other actively instead of only thinking of ourselves, life can be much better. As in many games, here also the team must keep together and keep up the rhythm. This requires discipline and a good team spirit, which is stimulated by saying “AHHA” together. The process of learning to pass on the sticks well and the process of speeding up is a strong practice of growth. We just go faster and faster and become better to feel better. 182
One interesting part of the game is the role of the leader, the one who claps. When the students try out the role of the leader, many times they clap too quickly, and the team falls apart. This is natural, as a leader would think: “I will give a pace and the team will follow me.” This is not good! A good leader has to have the humility to realize that he/she is supposed to lead the team at a pace that is good for the team! The important thing is the team, not keeping a good speed. We have to keep a speed that is fit for the team. There is this saying: “After all, I am their leader… so I really should follow them!” All the things described for a leader are also true for teachers. Teachers also need to pay attention to their groups and teach slower if necessary. Of course if the group can follow, then the teacher should go faster or teach more difficult things. The teacher is for the students (and not the other way around).
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24. Team plank walking teamwork, communication, team strategy, discipline, calmness, belief in others
3-5 per team
15-30 min
at least two wooden planks and some strong rope
Description: The goal of the people playing is to walk together as a team. They all have to stand on the two wooden planks as it is shown in the picture. Every person holds two ropes: one in their left and one in their right hand. The teacher makes two lines: one line from where they start, and one line that they have to reach. The team tries to get from the start line to the finish line while being on the planks together. If someone’s foot touches the ground, the whole team has to go to the beginning and start again. The teacher measures the time. If there are more than 3-5 people, then the others can make teams as well and after the first team finishes, they can also try. Their time should also be measured. The teams can race to see who is quickest. If there are more planks and ropes, then more teams can race at the same time!
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Sharing and moral: Sharing is not necessary after this game. The game is about working together in a team. It is almost impossible to move properly with the planks if the team does not work together well. They need to communicate and think of a way to move together. Even when they have a strategy it is difficult sometimes. It is easy to mess up and fall. In this case team members need to be calm and not be angry at each other! If they become angry, they will be able to focus even less. We need to have belief in others, so we can trust each and focus on our own job with complete discipline. This way the team can move forward.
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25. Team puzzle communication, teamwork, fairness, compromise, working together, calmness, quick thinking, creativity, humility
12-60
15-20 min + 15 min sharing
identical objects, such as sticks or plastic chairs
Description: There should be 3 or more identical teams, about 4-15 people in one team. Each team will have a task to accomplish, and for that task they need to use the identical objects (for the description we will call them “chairs”). The tasks of the teams will be such that they can’t all be accomplished at the same time. In the beginning of the game all the chairs will be in the middle in one pile, and ask all the teams to stand at an equal distance from the pile. The teams will receive their task on a piece of paper at the same time. They have 10 minutes to accomplish the task. The goals of the teams should be figured out based on what objects they have to work with and where they are situated, what the environment is like. Here we will give examples for the goals of the teams in a theoretical game where the 3 teams have to use chairs to accomplish their goals:
Team 1: Your goal is to create the largest possible circle from the chairs. The circle should have at least one tree inside of it. At the end of the game, your whole team should be standing inside the circle. Team 2: Your goal is to make 3 squares that are as big as possible out of the sticks. There should be nothing inside the squares: no people, no trees, no animals, etc. At the end of the game everyone in your team should be standing next to one of the squares. 186
Team 3: Your goal is to make a small castle by using all the chairs. At the end of the game all of the team members should be holding at least one chair.
As it can be seen, these three goals are difficult to accomplish at the same time, since they all require all the chairs. The teams will try to solve the problem, and the results can sometimes be very interesting! Note: This game is about communicating properly when our goals are different. Please make sure students or people playing the game don’t use violence to try to achieve their goals. Note 2: Also note that the basic concept of this game is that people with different goals have to come to a solution. The game can be played without any chairs or sticks; the only important thing is that the teacher can make up good goals for the teams that will cause conflict between them! Sharing and moral: Sharing is very important after this game, please do not skip it. Some questions to make them think: Who is happy with the result? How could they have done better together? What would have improved the result? Is the result fair? This game is mainly about communication between groups and communication inside the teams. The teams have to form unity and any team member should be able to represent the team’s goals. The different teams can approach this game in many different ways. They can for example all try to accomplish only their own goal. In this case 187
they will obviously try to get as much chair for themselves as possible, and try to accomplish their goal separately from others. This will lead to a “war” over the chairs – people will try to steal or take the chairs from other teams. This is very barbaric and primitive. A more sophisticated and a “better aura” solution is when the teams learn that they should communicate and try to see if the goals can be accomplished together. They should think together on a good solution, a fair solution! This game emphasizes strongly on communication. The two very important things of communication are: (1) to listen to others and (2) to say what is important for you, to represent your interest. Listening to others is a form of humility: we must realize that not only we are important in the team, but others are equally important. Saying what we think is right requires confidence, belief in ourselves and good aura to be able to trust in the other person or team. We must be able to tell our goal clearly and honestly to the other team in order to work together properly.
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26. Trust elevator trust, team spirit, believe in self and in others, responsibility
8-12
15 min
none
https://youtu.be/fWwMMtsKACI Description: One person lays down on the floor and crosses his/her arm on her/her chest. The others go around the laying person. The teacher should be one of the people around the laying person. He/she explains to the others that they will lift the laying person together using only one finger on each hand! He/she should tell them that even though it sounds impossible, together they will be able to do it. When they all put the fingers under the laying person and everybody feels prepared, the teacher asks the laying person to close his/her eyes and counts down: 3-2-1 and they lift the person slowly. If it goes easy the teacher can ask them to sway him/her a little bit or lift him/her higher and then put the person slowly back on the floor. Then we do the same with another person and so on and so on… The teacher should motivate them to try, because it is a very nice feeling and a big experience, but if someone really doesn’t want to do it, we shouldn’t force him/her. 189
Sharing and moral: Sharing is not necessary; the feeling is the experience itself. It is a nice experience to feel trust for the laying person, and experience that the others take care of him/her and he/she can be sure that the others won’t let him/her fall down, they pay attention. The others can feel the responsibility of taking care of their classmate. They can also feel the team spirit: they are capable of lifting that person together. It would be impossible alone, but together they can do bigger things.
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27. Turn the sheet thinking, team spirit, cooperation, helping each other
6-20
15 min
one sheet
https://youtu.be/c2G9JYiZOjk Description: We put a sheet on the ground. Every player has to stand on this sheet. When they are all on the sheet, the teacher tells them that the goal of the game is to turn the sheet over (so the side that is on the ground should come to the top, and the side that was on the top should touch the ground). It is very important that they can’t stand on the ground; they have to stand on the sheet during the whole game. Nobody can touch the ground! If somebody touches the ground then the whole teams starts again. If they can do it very fast, we can cut (or fold) the sheet in half and let them try again with this smaller piece. Sharing and moral: Sharing is not necessary after this game, but the teacher can ask them how they felt during the game, what did they experience? Was it easy or difficult? They can probably share about cooperation and fun. This game helps them to understand about teamwork. They can experience that helping each other doesn’t stop us but is actually good! If we all help each other in life we can be better and live a better life.
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28. Uninhabited island communication, working together, decision making, empathy
6-8 per team
30 min + 15 min sharing
paper and pen for everyone
Description: The groups sit in circles. The teacher tells everybody that they will be going to an uninhabited island (an island where there are no people at all). They will be put onto the island where they have to survive by themselves. The teacher asks everyone to think about what they would like to bring to the island and to write down the 10 most important things that they would like to bring to the island on their piece of paper (e.g. a box of matches, a knife, some rope, a pot, etc.). Important: they are not allowed to bring and food or drinks to the island! This thinking part should require 5 minutes. The next part will be the communication part, and will take 25 minutes. In the communication part the teacher tells the groups that they have to choose 3 items as a group together, that they will bring on the island with themselves. Just to clarify: it is not 3 items per person; it is in total 3 items for the whole group, and they will be going to the island together with those three items! They do not know how long they will have to survive on the island. The communication part lasts for 25 minutes, and by the end they should have a list of items that they are satisfied with. 192
Sharing and moral: Sharing should be done with everyone together, or if there are more than 30 people in total, then in smaller groups, e.g. in groups of 20-30 people. The teacher should ask if anyone wants to share any experiences. The teacher can propagate sharing with these questions: Who was happy with the final list of 3 items (raise their hands if yes)? Who felt like the others listened to him/her well enough? Who felt like the other didn’t listen to him/her enough? After asking these questions the teacher can ask the group members to share what they thought about these. Then the teacher can ask the groups to share what they chose as their 3 items. The most important goal of this game is to learn to communicate well. Communication is essential when working in a team, and in this game we work as a team. The two very important things of communication are: (1) to listen to others and (2) to say what is important for you, to represent your interest. These are the two basics for communication, but for good communication, we also need a good aura – we need to be able to tell our side of the story kindly, and not only hear what the other says, but also listen to it, and take others seriously. Listening to others is a form of humility: we must realize that not only we are important in the team, but others are equally important. Saying what we think is right requires confidence, belief in ourselves and good aura. In this game the group had to practice good communication: everyone had to say what they think will be important on the island, and why it would be important. Everyone also had to listen to others’ opinions on what would be important. As a group, they reasoned together and tried to find what could be important and why. Some people may have felt left out, or may have felt that others didn’t listen to them – this isn’t 193
good! The members of the group have to try to listen to everyone. Also some people may have been quiet during the whole time, even though the others would have listened to him/her – this also isn’t good, because the group can’t benefit from that person’s ideas. Everyone needs to have enough confidence to participate in the group thinking, and everyone needs enough humility to allow everyone else to feel good when participating. Always remember: there are many advantages of thinking together as a group; if we don’t communicate well, then we waste these advantages, and we might as well be working alone.
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29. We’re all on the same ship team communication, teamwork, cooperation, accepting others’ ideas, project management, creativity
8-60
30-60 min + 20 min sharing
requires serious preparation; building material for the teams
Description: The players are divided into teams. Each team starts with the same building materials, in different places from where they can’t see each other. The goal of the game is that all teams build exactly the same boat. How can this be accomplished? After 3 minutes of team-time, the main teacher shouts “Meeting!” and one person from each team comes to a central place (from where they can’t see any of the teams!). The delegates who came to the meeting have one minute to discuss how the ships should look like. After one minute the teacher sends them back to their teams, and the teams again have 3 minutes separately. Again, the teacher calls a meeting, and the teams each send one person to the meeting. It is very important that the same person can’t come again! Every time a new person has to come. The meeting is again 1 minute long, and after that there is again 3 minutes team time, and so on and so on. Ideally there should be as many meetings in total as there are people in a 195
team – this way everyone can try out the role of being in a meeting. The teacher can decide to have shorter and shorter team times near the end of the game if the teams are doing too well: for example instead of 3 minutes, only 2.5 minutes, then 2 minutes, or just one minute. Based on this an ideal team size is about 6 people. There should be 2-8 teams. If there are more than 8 teams, then the meetings become very difficult (because there will be more than 8 people at the meeting, and they only have 1 minute), and some people won’t be able to talk. The amount of building materials should be decided based on how many people are in a team. If many people play, then there should be a lot of building materials, since they will have many meetings. Also, if the teacher wants, there can be a lot of building materials, and the game can last longer. In this case the team times should be a bit longer (e.g. 4 minutes), or there should be more meetings. An ideal set of building materials should include some good, strong basic building items (e.g. wood, sticks, barrels, planks, rope, etc.), and many random and weird items. This way they have to talk a lot during the meetings about which item goes where, and exactly how it should be. It is also a good idea to include something that can be turned into a flag and a pen with which they can write on it – a flag usually strengthens the team spirit.
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Of course the game can be with any other goal: it is not important that the teams should build a ship. It can be any kind of object: some kind of vehicle, a castle, a house, etc. This should be decided based on what kinds of building materials are available. The teacher should tell the team about their goal (e.g. to build exactly the same ship). Alternatively, the teacher can also not give them a goal and just tell them to build “something”. Building a ship is a good idea, because at the end all the ships can be tied together and put on water, if there is water nearby. Sharing and moral: At the end of the game everyone should come together and we should compare the ships. They can take pictures of their teams with their ships, and make a group photo and enjoy that they managed to make similar ships. Afterwards everyone should stand or sit in a circle. Some questions to start the sharing: What was it like to work with so little time? Did you manage to stay calm during the game, even though there was very little time? How was it like to take part in a meeting? Did you feel the responsibility? What was important for achieving the goal? The players should share their own experiences and what they felt important in the game. Communication is essential when working in a team, and in this game we work as a team, in fact we work in a team of teams! The two very important things of communication are: (1) to listen to others and (2) to say what is important for you, to represent your interest. Listening to others is a form of humility: we must realize that not only we are important in the team, but others are equally important. Saying what we think is right requires confidence, belief in ourselves and good aura. 197
Aura is also important to be able to communicate kindly, so we all enjoy the conversation. In this game communication skills are especially important for the delegates at the meetings. They have to quickly and effectively talk with the other representatives, and remember everything perfectly, so they can tell their team what to build. When they get back to their teams, they practice saying what is right, and the others practice listening and following. This game also shows how communication is essential when working together to reach a goal. In this game the teams have many opportunities to talk to each other at the meetings. But still, in the end, the ships will not look exactly the same. The teams used the same building material, they had a lot of time to communicate with each other, and even like this it was difficult to build the same thing. Now imagine if you are working in a team at a larger organization, such as AHHA Education, somewhere were the goal is not as simple as building a boat, and where meeting with other leaders and teachers is not very frequent. We can understand that communication is very important if we want to accomplish the same goal everywhere.
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