Write down the names of animals that make a distinct noise on different slips of paper. Give the slips out to everyone and tell them that they have to find the people that have the same animal without talking. Most children will start making animal noises and/or gestures. This is a fun way to put children into groups for other activities, games or ice breakers.
Author: David Priestley
Have the group pair up (if there is an odd number of people the leader can pair up with someone). Each person will take around three-four minutes interviewing their partner. At the end of the allotted time, everyone will introduce the person that they interviewed to the rest of the group.
Pass a roll of toilet paper around the room and tell the group to take as much as they want (or the amount of toilet paper they use in an average day). After they have taken at least one square of toilet paper, have them go around the room and share one fact about themselves for each square of toilet paper that they have taken.
Describe an imaginary map of appropriate area (national or local) and get your group to visualise it on the floor. Ask them to stand on the part of the map where they currently live (if you are meeting the group for the first time, also get them to state their name and a unique fact about themselves). You could vary this by asking where people would like to live or go on holiday etc.
Each person has to write an advert for him or herself as if they were going to be sold in the local paper. The variation is to write a for sale advert for someone else.
Write the names of famous people (or places) on post-it notes and put the post-it notes on the back of the participants. Have the participants go to different people and have them ask each other yes and no questions to try and figure out who their person is. The person who finds out who they are first wins.
Split everyone up into groups and give them a silly sentence on a piece of paper. Tell the group that they have to make up a story, act it out, and have the story end with the sentence that you have given them.
Each person writes a unique fact about themselves that is unknown to the rest of the group. The unique facts are collected, shuffled and handed out again. Circulate the room and write as many unique facts down as you can. Then circulate again and identify the owners of the unique facts.
Introduce your partner is an easy Ice Breaker to play with a new group. In this game you must speak about the person seated to your left for 30 to 60 seconds. Anything you say must, as far as you, know be made up/false.
Draw up a grid with 10 squares on it. In each square put a question that the individual has to find someone to sign, e.g. find someone who went to the cinema in the last seven days. When people have completed the grid they should sit down or stand on a chair. People may sign their own card for one category only and must collect 10 different signatures. The person who collects the most amount of signatures or completes their bingo card first wins the challenge.
The group pairs up and each face their partner. Each person selects a topic. Both partners speak simultaneously for one minute and try to make what they are saying so interesting that their partner stops what they’re talking about and listens to them instead.
Say three things about the person on your left. First sentence starts with the words “It’s obvious …” (This sentence you state something that is obvious about them.) The second sentence starts “I notice …” (This sentence you state something less obvious). The third sentence starts “I think that you ….” (This sentence you guess what they will be like/something about them).