Activity Guide: Icebreakers And Teambuilders

activity guide: icebreakers and teambuilders Consider starting your 30 Hour Famine event off with a few activities that help participants get to know one another. animal antics Preparation: • Prepare one card/paper per participant, each with a type of animal written on it. Depending on the size of groups you wish to form, you will decide how many of each animal you need (e.g., if you wish to have groups of five, make five cow cards, five chicken cards, five horse cards, etc.). • Prepare blindfolds from old sheets/clothes – one per participant. Play: 1. Give everyone a card bearing a type of animal. Instruct participants to keep their “identity” secret for now. 2. Hand out blindfolds and instruct participants to put them on. 3. Explain that on the count of three, each participant will make the sound of the animal they have been assigned. They must then move carefully towards other participants who are making the same sound. Eventually all participants will be organized into animal groups (e.g., all cows together, all dogs together). 4. Participants take off their blindfolds and meet their new group members. 5. You can stay in these groups for the other group type activities. communication is key Preparation: • Prepare blindfolds – one per participant. • Organize participants into groups of 6 to 10. Use Animal Antics (above) to organize groups. Play: 1. Hand out one blindfold to each participant and instruct them to put them on. 2. Tell the participants that they must organize their group into a line, from oldest to youngest, by exact birth date, but they may not speak to one another while they remain blindfolded. 3.The group will have to devise a method of determining each other’s birthday and birth year, without being able to speak to or see each other. Often, one person in the group will take the lead and move throughout the group communicating with each person. This leader will then move each participant into the line accordingly. You may find the groups choose to clap their hands or snap their fingers to communicate. Or they may develop a different type of communication. For example, if one group member were age 16, they could clap their hands 16 times. Then they could pause before clapping 6 times to show they were born in June. Finally they could clap two more times to show they were born on the second of June. Keep these ideas secret, though. Let the groups devise their own methods of communication. 4. When all groups have completed the task, have them remove their blindfolds and check that they achieved their goal. 2 activity guide: icebreakers and teambuilders continued knotty rope initiative Preparation: • Organize participants into groups of 10 to 12 people. • You will need one long rope per group. • Tie knots in the rope, about 31/2 feet apart. Tie one more knot than there are people in the group (i.e., 11 knots for 10 people). Play: 1. Lay the rope on the ground and have each person in the group place one hand on the rope between two knots. 2. Once group members have arranged themselves along the rope, explain that their one hand is now “glued” to the rope. They cannot remove this “glued” hand until all of the knots have been removed from the rope. 3. The group members must work together to figure out how to untie the knots in the rope without removing their “glued” hand. They may touch the rope with their other hand, but they may not remove the “glued” hand or switch it for their other hand. 4. Solution: The group must loosen the knots in the rope so that they can physically move each member “glued” to the rope through the knot, thereby untying it. e fus ing e r I oth n o to d 2 activ