Divide the group into teams.
The leader shouts out a word that is commonly found in songs (“love”, “road”, “river”, “girl”, “baby”, “need”, and so on.)
The teams must sing a song in unison (together) using that word. The first team to do it wins a point. Play as long as they like it.
All the players stand in a circle, facing one another, but looking down at their feet.
When the leader says “now”, everyone looks up and at someone else’s eyes. If they make direct eye contact with someone (i.e. person A is looking straight and person B, and person B is looking straight at person A), both people SCRREEEAAAAMMMMM, and then sit down.
All the remaining players look back down at their feet, and the game continues until only 2 people are left.
Gets the adrenalin pumping! 🙂
You need probably at least 6 players for this game, but this really is a case of the more the merrier.
Nominate one player to be the “detective”, and send him/her out of the room.
When the “detective” has gone, choose one of the remaining players to be the “murderer”. The murderer and all the remaining players then sit in a large circle facing each other.
The “detective” is called back in, and stands in the centre of the circle.
The “murderer” now has to “kill” off all the other players by winking at them. The “detective” has to try and work out which of the players is the murderer before all the other players are murdered. The other players are not allowed to give the game away to the “detective”, and usually “die” in a highly dramatic and noisy fashion!
A less blood-thirsty variation is to nominate a “leader” instead of a “murderer”, who performs certain actions that the rest of the group must follow. The “detective” has to work out who the leader is. Good actions are clapping, stamping feet, waving, slapping knees, etc (i.e. the whole group is clapping, and suddenly switch to stamping their feet).
Another mad game that’s fairly pointless, but lots of fun and breaks the ice. There are no real winners and losers – it just runs on until everyone’s had enough!
You need a large-ish hall for us, and probably at least 8 players.
Put out two less chairs than there are players, scattering them around randomly so that they are all slightly further than touching distance away (that is, if you sit on a chair and stretch out your arms, you wouldn’t quite touch someone else doing the same thing in another chair). The aim is to create a sort of “maze” that can be dodged around by the two people who will be running around. This doesn’t matter too much, but there does need to be enough space to move between the chairs, but not so much it’s easy to run between them.
Pick two players, one is the “cat”, the other is the “mouse”. The game starts like normal “it”. The “cat” chases the mouse in and out of the chairs, and tries to touch him/her. If the “cat” manages it, the roles swap, and the “mouse” is now the “cat” and the “cat” is the “mouse.”
The fun bit is that the “mouse” can, at any point, touch the shoulder of someone who is sitting down. The person sitting down must then stand up, and becomes the “cat”, while the old “cat” now becomes the mouse!
There are a couple of variations. Firstly, the “cat” and “mouse” don’t have to swap when the “mouse” sits down – the person who stands up can become the “mouse” instead.
Secondly, you can have them lying on the floor instead of sitting in chairs, and the “mouse” must lie down beside them to switch to a new “mouse”. I’ve also heard of this done where they lie down in pairs, and the “mouse” lies down to make them three in a row, and the person ‘opposite’ the “mouse” in the threesome becomes the new “cat”.
Very simple and fun game. You need a couple of balloons, and one chair per player.
Split the players into two teams, and set up two rows of chairs – facing one another – so that chairs are about 1m apart. Get the players to sit in the chairs so that the two teams are facing each other.
The aim of the game is to try and to hit the balloon over the opposing team’s heads, so that it lands on the floor behind them. Players must remain fully seated in the chairs with both feet on the ground (and all 4 chair legs on the ground) at all times.
Start off with one balloon – The referee stands at one end of the rows, and throws it into the air between the two chairs. Each time a balloon hits the floor behind a team, it is one point. The referee then picks it up, and throws it between the chairs again from the end of the row. As the game progresses, feel free to introduce more balloons into the mix.
Standing up, tilting the chair, or kicking the balloon is an automatic penalty, with a point awarded to the other team.
The team with the most points at the end wins!
Really simple, and lots of fun. The aim of the game is to make the other people smile!
The group sit in a circle, one person is “it”.
The “it” person goes around the group in turn, saying:
Honey, if you love me, just give me a smile.
To which his target responds:
Honey, you know I love you, but I just can’t smile.
If the target manages to say this without smiling, the person who is “it” moves on. If the target does smile, they become “it”, and the person who was “it” sits down in their place.
The person who is “it” is allowed to do almost anything to try and make the person smile (funny faces, silly actions, etc), but it is good to establish rules for what physical contact, if any, is allowed. The target also has to maintain eye-contact while saying their line.
You need between 9 and 16 players, and ideally a multiple of 4. The idea of the game is to get all your team next to each other in the circle.
Setup
First if all, write the numbers 1,2,3,.. etc on pieces of paper, so that you have one piece for each player. So, if you have 12 players, you will have 12 pieces of paper, the first with “1”, the second with “2”, etc, all the way up to 12. Now fold them up.
Arrange the players in a circle of chairs facing inwards, with one extra chair. Go around the group and assign teams, so that each team has 3 or 4 players, and so no two players sitting next to each other are in the same team. E.g. for twelve players go “A”,”B”,”C”,”A”,”B”,”C”,”A”,”B”,”C”,”A”,”B”,”C”.
Get all the “A”s to stand up, and make sure they all know who they’re team members are. Likewise the other groups.
Finally, hand out the folded pieces of paper, one per player, and ask them to look at it, but they mustn’t show anyone else.
Playing
The player who is to the right of the empty chair calls out a number (from 1 to 12 in our example). The player who was given that number at the start of the game must move and sit in the empty chair.
The player who is now to the right of the newly empty chair then calls out a number, and whoever was given that number now moves to the newly empty chair. And so on.
The game is over when a team manages to get all 3 or 4 of its members sitting next to each other in a row.
I’ve found that you can play this two or three times in an evening before it gets tired. The teams can stay the same, but collect in all the pieces of paper and re-allocate numbers between rounds.
The Rules
Variations
This game is lots of fun if you use the names of players instead of numbers on the pieces of paper. So if you had Rod, Jane, and Freddy, you might call out “Freddy”, and Jane would move to sit next to you!!
You can also replace 3 (or 4, if your teams have 4 members) of the chairs with a sofa, or comfy chairs. The winning team is the one that manages to get all its members onto the “sofa”. Warning – this version takes a lot longer to play, and certainly younger players may lose interest.
Nominate a “splat-er”. All the other players stand in a circle around the “splat-er”. The “splat-er” stands in the middle with his/her fingers pointed upwards like a gun. He/she then slowly turns around on the spot, until he/she suddenly points their fingers towards one of the players, as if he/she was shooting them, and says “SPLAT.”
Immediately, the person who has “splatted” has to drop to the ground (to dodge the splat), and the two people either side have to ‘shoot’ each other (i.e. over the dropped persons head) with their fingers and say “SPLAT.”
The game continues in this way until only two players are left.
At this point the following happens:
There is always a joker who calls out “tomato” – this should be banned before the splat duel starts! Similarly, continuing to call vegetables ad nauseam is to discouraged.
This game is completely random. You need at least 8 players, really.
Setup
So now the game begins.
As far as I can tell there is no point to this game, but it’s always a big hit with the youth!
Very simple game. You need at least 4 players (but more is better), and a large open space (indoor or out).
An alternative way of expressing “equilateral triangle” is “move to you are the same distance from both the people you have chosen, as they are from each other”.
More fun then it sounds, and good for several rounds.
My thanks to Roger for suggesting this, even if it was in a different context.