I Am An Oak Tree is an ice-breaker adapted from an improv game. It’s designed to get people relating to each other, acting creatively, and creating mini-narratives. Activity Youth stand in a circle. Ask one person to stands in the middle and proclaim “I am an oak tree,” while making their body into a tree …
Today is a two-fer in my extended week sharing my favorite ice-breakers. I’m going to share with you two games I like to have students play a lot: “Wah” and “Name Wah.” Wah “Wah” is an quick and energizing game that is about coordination, observation, and timing that lots of student programs use. “Wah” Instructions …
“Robot Factory” is a fun team-building ice-breaker that gets kids creative juices flowing. It scales well for groups of different sizes. It involves no supplies or preparation. I’ve found it engaging for middle school to high school age youth. The objective of Robot Factory is for each team to work together to communicate what their …
Zoom In, Zoom Out is an ice-breaker designed to help students to explore how good stories engage the reader by focusing on tiny details and by telling universal truths. We’ve used it to good effect to get our students creative juices flowing at the beginning of our youth programs. The ice-breaker requires no supplies or …
Over the weekend, I needed a break from the terrible condition of the air in the Bay Area due to nearby wildfires. So I headed over to one of the most peaceful places in the city that I know: the Osher rainforest at the California Academy of Sciences. The five story rainforest did not disappoint. …
The Talk Show is one of my favorite ice-breakers to get students to know one another toward the beginning of a program. The idea is to pair up students with one another randomly and have each one play the role of a talk show host and talk show guest. The goal is for each student to …
The Raccoon Circle is a collection of games and ice-breakers all centered around a circle of rope or tubing used by a group (typically youth). There are hundreds and hundreds of Raccoon Circle activities that have been created and shared virally for years. You can find several online listings of activities (Jim Cain’s being the most …
So much to love about this promotional video by NASA: the diversity of people, the acknowledgement of all the pioneers who came before, and a powerful vision of space exploration as a noble cause. So well done.
The New York Times recently ran a series of articles on how parents are increasingly worried about the amount of time their children are spending on their digital devices. The click-baity headlines include: “The Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor Kids Is Not What We Expected“, “A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to …
Despite having lived in San Francisco for seven years and working in a tech field, I’ve never actually participated in a hackathon. Since I’m not a developer or a designer, it just never felt like something that I would have much to contribute to. That changed this weekend. For the past couple of months, I’ve …