5 Icebrakers PDF
5 Icebrakers PDF
5 Icebrakers PDF
Musical People
A good starter if people don’t know one another. It also mixes people up who
know one another and have sat together. All participants sit in a circle. The
facilitator stands in the middle, which means there is a chair short. The trainer
calls out a statement like “Anyone wearing jeans change places” The object is
to get people out of their chairs so anyone wearing jeans has to move. They
are not allowed to take the seat next to them or to go back to the seat they’ve
just left. The next person in the middle calls out a statement like “Anyone who
has a cat or a dog, change” and so on…
Card Types
To mix people up and get them into groups for breakout exercises: Prepare
several sets of small cards in advance with four types of a set (if you want four
in a group) – for example: types of flower, colours, cities, weather, cars,
clothes (this would be six groups of four so you would have 24 people in the
whole group). You need the same number of sets for the number of groups
you want to divide people into. So the set of flowers might be daffodil, tulip,
daisy and rose. Then offer each participant a card (face down so they don’t
see what the card says or what the picture is). Then ask participants to find
the other people in their set, and to stay with them. You can then move them
on to their groups, the place they need to be and the task you have for them.
Secret Signs
Sit everyone around without desks/tables in front of them. Have an object to
pass around (say a pair of scissors). The leader passes the object to the next
person having studied it carefully explains they must declare it either
“crossed” or “uncrossed”. The next person does the same but the leader has
to say whether they are correct or not. (In fact the crossed or uncrossed is
nothing to do with the object but with the person’s legs – are they crossed or
uncrossed.) Each time the object returns to the leader s/he declares truthfully
according to whether their own legs are crossed/uncrossed. Eventually some
people will get the correct answer either by luck or by observation but they
mustn’t tell the others! When most people seem to have grasped the idea,
put the others out of their misery!
My Personal Shield
Give each person a piece of flipchart paper, folded into 4 or 6 squares. Write
up a list areas on the flipchart / powerpoint. Then ask each person to draw
how they would depict the subject areas in relation to them.
When everybody has had time to draw their response in each square ask the
group to pair up and show their sheet to their partner, who then proceeds to
guess what the drawings are depicting.