Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2001 17:37:15 -0800
From: JULIE INY <juliekidsfirst@earthlink.net>
Subject: Icebreakers - the compiled list


Hi everyone
Thank you!! to the many folks who sent me ice-breakers and relationship
building games. Here is the compiled list of actual activities and some
great resources. Please send me others whenever you're inspired.
Julie Iny
Kids First


ICE BREAKERS: NAME GAMES AND OTHER GET-TO-KNOW-EACH-OTHER GAMES

3 THINGS IN COMMON (great for new group)
Each student pairs up with another student who she doesn’t know. They
must find three things that they have in common. Then each pair of
students presents their findings to the rest of the group.

TOSS THE BALL (requires a ball)
Get in a circle. Toss the ball around and say the name of the person
you toss it to.

NAME MEMORY
Go around in a circle. 1st person says her name; 2nd person says her
name and also says the 1st person’s name over again, and so on all the
way around the circle. The last person has to repeat everyone’s name.
As a variation, have each person say her name AND what plant she would
be, if she could be a plant. This way there is more to remember than
simply people’s names, which makes it more interesting. OR, have
everyone say an adjective plus her name, but the adjective must begin
with the same letter…for example, Daring David, Ridiculous Rick,
Wonderful Wendy, etc.

THE BIG WIND BLOWS (lots of fun)
Get in a tight circle, sitting knee-to-knee. Group leader begins by
standing outside the circle and saying "The big wind blows for everyone
who____________(fill in the blank)." Whoever fits the criteria and the
group leader who began the game must get up and move to another vacated
seat within the circle. There will be one person who ends up without a
place to sit in the circle. This person continues the game by saying
"The big wind blows for anyone who___________" and the game continues
on. The catch is that when changing seats in the circle, no running is
allowed. Everyone must hop on one foot, or walk on all fours, or
whatever. The big wind could blow for anyone wearing jeans, people who
have older sisters, people who ate breakfast, people who listen to
Brittany Spears, etc. etc.

PICTURE GUESSING GAME (great for the first crew meeting!)
Everybody draws a picture that expresses something about themselves.
The drawings are collected. One by one, the drawings are "pulled out of
a hat" and held up, and the group tries to guess who drew it. Whoever
guesses correctly is the next one to choose a drawing ‘out of the hat’
to hold up for the group to guess. When someone guesses correctly, the
person who drew the picture must explain it’s meaning to the group.

ANIMAL CHARADES (great interactive game)
Get in groups of three. Each group is given the name of an animal.
They must come up with a way to demonstrate that animal, or act it out
as a team. Then each group presents their demonstration to the group,
who has to guess what animal it is.

EVOLUTION (very fun)
Everyone begins as an ‘egg’, so people have to pretend to be an egg.
Find another egg and play ‘rock, paper, scissors’ with the other egg.
Whoever wins gets to ‘evolve’ into a chicken, so now the chickens have
to pretend to be chickens. Whoever loses remains an egg. Then the
chickens must find other chickens in order to play rock, paper,
scissors. The eggs must play with other eggs. Whoever wins evolves.
Whoever loses de-volves. The loser between two chickens will become an
egg again. The winner will become a dinosaur and pretend to be that.
Loser eggs remain eggs. Again, like animals play rock, paper, scissors
with like animals. Losers de-volve into what they were previously.
Winners between two dinosaurs evolve into the highest form of evolution:
either ELVIS or the ENLIGHTENED ONE, in which case they would pretend to
be ELVIS or sit down and say OM, depending on how you choose to play the
game.

ZIP/ZAP/ZOP (group needs to be comfortable with each other to play)
Get in a circle. Someone begins by pointing to another person in the
circle and saying "ZIP!" That person then points to yet another person
and says "ZAP!" That person points to another person and says "ZOP!"
This continues, but the words must be said in order: ZIP, ZAP, ZOP. If
someone makes a mistake and says a word out of order, that person is out
of the game. Eventually, the circle dwindles to just a few people, then
to only 2 people, who are staring at each other, yelling ZIP!, ZAP!,
ZOP! Until one of them makes a mistake.

ORB
Get in a circle. Toss an imaginary ORB around the circle. It changes
shape, size, and noise when it transfers hands. Whoever catches the ORB
demonstrates how heavy it is and what shape it takes by the way she
catches it. The person who catches it also has to make the noise of the
ORB, which also changes from person to person.

BLIND POLYGON (required blindfolds and a rope)
The group is blindfolded. They must form a perfect square, triangle, or
whatever, using a rope. They all must have at least one hand on the
rope at all times!

ISLAND
Find a big stump, rock, or make a circle on the ground two feet in
diameter, and dub this the ‘island.’ The entire crew must figure out a
way to stay on the island for two minutes.


ORDER OUT OF CHAOS
Everyone is blindfolded. Each person gets a number. They must line up
in order without talking. OR…the group must line up according to eye
color…darkest to lightest…without saying a word.

MASS STAND UP
Have the crew sit in a circle, backs to the middle. Now, have everyone
link elbows with the person sitting next to her. Then, try to stand up
as a group. A lot tougher than it sounds!

HUMAN KNOT
Have the crew stand in a tight circle, shoulder-to-shoulder, and place
their hands in the center. Now, have them grab a couple of hands, but
make sure no one grabs a pair of hands belonging to the same person, or
grabs either of the hands of the person standing directly next to them.
Then, unravel the knot you’ve just created without having anyone break
their grip…good luck!

HAVE YOU EVER?
Group stands in a circle. Each takes a turn asking a question, "Have
you ever_____"(filling in the blank). Those who have, answer yes by
walking to the center of the circle and slapping a "high five" with
whoever else has done the action.

INTRO TO THE LEFT
Group sits in a circle. Each person has to introduce the person on the
left. Take five minutes (total) to talk to both the person on your left
and the person on your right. One by one, each person introduces the
person on their left.

YURT CIRCLE
With an even number of people, form a circle facing inward. One person
says, "in", the next person says "out", alternating around the circle.
On the count of three, each "in" person leans toward the center while
each "out" person leans back. Feet need to be kept stationary. Once
the yurt is stable, count to three and have all the "ins" and "outs"
switch roles while continuing to hold hands.

SHITTY PAPERS
One of my favorites is "Shitty Papers" You pass around a roll of tissue
and have folks tear off the amount they normally use (to wipe). Most
people, will tear off quite a bit. When everyone has their piece then
you have the group count their squares.
The punch line is that everyone must share one thing about themselves
for each square that they have. This also serves as a lesson to be more
conservative with the toilet paper.
I got this from a web site: The Sugar Bowl- games: http://www.bayweb.com 

LIFE MAP
___ My favorite group ice breaker is the 'life map' - which you probably
already know. Each individual in the group draws a map of their life
starting from birth to the present, using map symbols (e.g. stop signs,
do not enter, other) to represent significant periods in their life.
You can get full notes on the activity and many other ice breakers in
the book Global Teacher, GlobalLearner, by Graham Pike and David Selby -
it's a bible in the field of global ed (you can order it from the Green
Brick Road - check out their website www.gbr.org ).

WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW
Hand out slips of scratch paper and ask people to write down something
about themselves that they think nobody else in the room knows. Then
collect the sheets, shuffle them, hand them out again (making sure
nobody gets their own). Each person reads out what is on their slip, one
by one, and the group tries to guess who wrote it. This really gets
people laughing! Unless you have a lot of time, I wouldn't recommend it
for groups larger than 15 or so, because these tidbits about people tend
to be surprising and prompt curiosity and discussion.

BIRTHDAY LINE
one of my favorites is the birthday line. it's as many people as you
want. you take some tape and do two parallel lines on the floor about a
foot wide. everyone has to stand in a row inside the lines and make sure
their feet aren't touching the tape lines. they can stand side by side
in the line so that the task is not impossible. once everyone's
gathered, tell them that they now have to arrange each other in birthday
order without stepping out of or on the lines. it's alot of fun and
seems difficult but it's possible. as people step out of the line the
amount of space you have to move around increases so it gets easier.
i've seen one big kid pick up a smaller one and move him to a different
spot. another one i like is silent affirmations where you tape a piece
of paper to your back and people walk around writing nice things about
each other on the sheets.

Another one along those lines is when you have people line up in a
circle with their backs facing inside. they then have to close their
eyes. you pull about five or six people out depending on the size of the
group and there's one person who has a long list of qualities to say out
loud (ie. someone who i think is funny/fashionable/nice/smart...).
those five or six people who were pulled out are inside the circle and
they get to go around and squeeze or touch someone they think fits that
description. you keep rotating until everyone has gotten the chance to
squeeze. usually a group does about five affirmations before switching
to a new set of people. people bingo is a good way to get to know
others. same as regular bingo--create a game sheet with different
things on it like "broken bone" or "lived in more than 5 places", etc.
they have to go around and find people who match that and write their
names on the piece of paper. usually sparks conversation.

2 Truths and A LIE
Two Truths and a Lie is a good game to break the chill- especially if
y'all don't know each other well. Each person has to tell 2 truths
about themselves and one lie and the others have to guess which is the
lie (all three statements should be beleivable, yet a bit wacky so that
it's hard to figure out).
Each person tells two truths and one un-truth about themselves, then
everyone else has to guess which is the un-truth. The key is to make
the truths as as outrageous as the untruths.


<Resources>

We bought several books on icebreakers and the best one (by far!) has
been "The Encyclopedia of Ice Breakers" by Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer.It cost
about $130 when we bought it last spring. It has a ton of terrific
icebreakers!

I also have this book called Kokology: the Game of Self-Discovery that
is not really icebreakers. However, depending on how comfortable the
group is
with each other, it is great fun. We started doing a couple of the
games at the beginning of each staff meeting.


This isn't so much a list of my favorite icebreakers, but I do have some
great websites I can point you to with a huge list of icebreakers,
teambuilders, and energizers.

This page has a HUGE number of riddles, teambuilders, ice breakers, and
energizers.
http://www.du.edu/~citin/activitypage.html 

This page is more designed for corporate type activities, but most of
the activities are still relevant to AMIGOS.
http://www.cornell.edu/OHR/TNET/Icebreakers/Icebreakers.html 

Another good resource: http://web.bham.ac.uk/M.Cox/games/homepage.htm 

A site a teacher has put together:
http://www.angelfire.com/ks/tonyaskinner/iceteam.html 

Project Adventure has a great list of books. You can contact them at
1-800-796-9917 or www.pa.org.

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