These activities and games educate, equip, and empower young people to build community, trust, and open communication with others in their community.
Ice breakers: Here are a few icebreakers to warm up a group.
In this Mini-Teach activity, participants move around the room explaining or teaching one small skill or bit of knowlede they have. Everyone has something unique they know or can do. From how to draw a simple cartoon to how to handle being ghosted, this expands creative interaction, confidence, and trust.
This Human Knot activity teaches group problem-solving. Goals: to work together, see the big picture, and think about the connection between individuals in the group. In 30-45 minutes, youth work together to progress from a “tangled mess” to an untangled circle.
This Turnstile activity teaches group trust. Goals: to accomplish a task together through the use of teamwork skills, problem solving, risk taking, and perseverance. Turnstile is a problem solving activity that gets participants out of their comfort zone. Although it looks like a simple jump rope activity at first, youth quickly learn that they need to rely on one another’s strengths and skills to make it through. It is very rare for a group to easily breeze through the three rounds. The group must practice perseverance and teamwork in order to succeed.
Yurt Circle teaches trust and belonging. Goals: to recognize everyone is part of the big picture. The skills needed to take care of a small community of individuals are similar to those needed to care for a larger community. This activity can be done at different times throughout the year, each time adding more people to the circle.