If you work with children in a community center, camp, school, or elsewhere, you are by nature adaptable and flexible; a master of improvisation.Our interactive workshop, Back Pocket Games for Adults will offer you creative, practical tools for making ordinary moments into meaningful opportunities for experiential education. You'll learn hands-on activities, including ice-breakers, team building, and theater games that you can adapt into programming for children ages 3 - 13. In addition, you'll gain insightful ways in which you can use these activities to strengthen your children's connection to values, holidays, and special events.
Check out 4 easy, quick, fun and engaging activities that are perfect for staff icebreakers
Change 3 Things
- Have participants stand in two lines facing each other.
- Explain that each partner will make mental notes of what their buddy is wearing. How they are wearing it, if they have earrings or necklaces or watches on and how many of each they have; how many buttons do they have buttoned or unbuttoned on their shirt.
- Ask one line to turn around while the participants on the other line have one minute to change three things about themselves (buttoning an extra button, moving a watch to the other wrist, tucking a necklace in their shirt).
- At the end of the minute, the first line will turn around and try to guess the three things their buddy changed about themselves.
- Repeat with the opposite line.
15 Second Facts
- One participant volunteers to share as many facts about themselves in 15 seconds.
- Extra challenges: Who can say the most facts in the time limit? Who can remember the most about the facts given for each participant?
Helping Hands
- One team member is the "voice" of the character, while the other is the "hands" of the character.
- The participant who is playing the voice is not permitted to use their hands and the participant playing the hands is not allowed to speak.
- Participant playing the voice puts their hands behind their back, and the participant playing the hands puts their arms through the "voice's" elbows, effectively becoming the arms.
- As "voice" relates a situation, "hands" acts out the event.
- Events become progressively more complex, and faster.
Statue
- In a large space, participants find a place and strike and interesting pose as if they were a statue in a museum.
- The facilitator walks around the space trying to get participants to laugh or move.
- Participants may move, as long as the facilitator/ "Security Guard" is not looking or cannot see them.
- If participants are tricked into smiling/moving or are caught moving, they are out and must wait for the next round to begin.
For more awesome activities, visit our Resources Page.
