Requirements: Pen & a slip of paper for everyone.

Before your group gathers, write everyone’s name down on a slip of paper. Place the papers in a basket and let each person withdraw one, making sure they don't get their own name.

Each person then has three minutes to write down three things about the person who they drew out.

The first thing needs to involve a fruit/be a fruit, the second needs to be a colour/use a colour & the third needs to be an animal/involve an animal.

Collect all the papers and read out the descriptions and let the group guess who is being described.

Requirements: Pen & a slip of paper for everyone.

Each person needs to write their name down in the top corner.

In this simple icebreaker, each member of your group needs to write down one funny anecdote or slightly obscure fact about themself. For example: "I once was close enough to Prince William to knock him out." or "I went through a phase where I had an imaginary friend that was a koala named Fredrick."

Gather all the slips of paper and read out the facts one at a time letting the group guess out who the fact is about.

Requirements: Pen & a slip of paper for everyone.

Each person needs to write their name down in the top corner.

Each member of the group is required to write down two truths & one lie about themselves on a slip of paper. (Tell them not to necessarily write them in that order). Give them 2-3 minutes to do this. Once everyone is done writing them down, have the facilitator collect the pieces of paper.

Read out the three things written on a particular slip of paper & have the group guess which are true and which are false. Let the person who wrote them down explain their stories and tell you which are true/false as you go along.

In this simple ice breaker game, all you need to do before starting is to ensure that all couples that are sitting together be separated from their partner as it will make the game too easy for them. They should sit next to someone they don't really know well.

Each person is required to introduce the person to their left to the group by saying their full name and then describing a few things about that person. The things said should both be true, creative and even made up (so long as it does not embarrass or belittle that person in any way). Once complete, that person who was introduced gets to have their turn in introducing the person to the left. And so and so on. Have fun with this one!

*This game can be adapted to suit your own style.

The basic format goes as follows: You start with a sentence – “I’m going on a trip to Hawaii and I’m taking a…” – and whatever you take is where the game part comes in.

For example: “I’m going on a trip to Hawaii and I’m taking an eggplant and a tomato.“ Then the next person in the circle would start with the beginning part of the sentence and try their own version. For example: “I’m going a trip to Hawaii and I’m taking a bag and clothes.” The leader of the game then tells them whether or not they can come with on the trip. In this example, person two can’t come with because they haven’t replicated the pattern the leader started with.

The beginning of your sentence can be whatever you like. Here are some variations on the catch:

– Only items with a double letter can be taken (eg. strawberry, grass, beer).
– Only pairs where the second item starts with the last letter of the first item may be taken (eg. eggplant & tomato; fish & hat).
– Only items in the same category may be taken (eg. shoes and shirt, fish and chips, flowers and grass).
– Only items that are also song titles may be taken (eg. a bed of roses, a lonely boy, a paperback writer).
– Only items with the same number of letters may be taken (eg. a hat and a top, a ball and pens).

Another variation is where the items don’t matter but the actions of the leader need to be replicated while they are speaking. For example: “I’m going on a picnic (cross my ankles) and I’m (cross my arms) taking a (put one hand on my knee) big bowl of (rub the back of my neck) Cheerios!”

Then to join me on my picnic they need to replicate the sequence of actions while talking. Your actions can be as obvious or as discreet as you like!

Generally with this game, make sure at least one person (if the group is large) knows the game before we start. Keep going until everyone get’s the trick!

Requirements: A sheet of sticky labels and a pen.

Beforehand, write down the names of famous people on a sticky label, one name per label.

Seat your group in a circle and stick one label on each person’s forehead, making sure that they don’t see what is on their label. (People can be sport’s personalities, politicians, actors, singers, scientists, well-known fictional characters, etc.)

Now each person has a chance to ask one question at a time to try find out who they are. The catch is the group may only respond “yes” or “no.” Once they think they have figured out who they are, they can use their question turn to ask “Am I Oprah Winfrey?”, for example.

This is another one of those mad talking games. You need two random objects and yourselves.

The leader starts the game by handing one of the objects to the person on their left and they tell them “This is a banana” (make sure your object is not a banana). The receiver then asks the leader “A what?” and the leader repeats “A banana.” The receiver then hands the object to the person to their left and they repeat the exercise, but only the leader may ever answer what the object is. If someone answers what the object is they are out. To confuse matters even further we now take the second object and the leader hands it off to the person on their right telling them “This is a grapefruit.” The receiver responds “A what?” and the leader answers “A grapefruit.” The game goes on with the second object being passed right around the circle whilst the original object goes left around the circle.

Major confusion and laughter happens when the two objects hit the person in the middle and they cross over. You can replace the name of the fruit with “a whit” and “a whet” if you want it to be harder!

In this game your players need a keen sense of observation!

Explain to them beforehand how it works: You have to touch a body part and call it something else. The person following on from you has to touch the body part you named and call it something else.

For example:
– “This is a hand.” (Touching knee).
– “This is an eye.” (Touching hand).
– “This is a toenail.” (Touching eye).

And so on and so forth. Each person has three seconds to touch the appropriate body part and name it something else. Speed is what makes this game funny.

This is a quick talking game. Each person in the circle has three seconds to respond to what the previous person has said.

Pre-determine what kind of association you want. For example: Do the words need to be the same type of thing (a food or a sport), or do they need to be related by last letter being the starting letter for the next word, etc. The most common ones are the category associations but you can also let your group run free with any association they can think of.

Let us say that we are playing a category association game and our category is sport.

Our leader starts with “baseball”. Player two now has three seconds to respond, say with “soccer”, player three now has three seconds to respond, say with “skiing.” And so on and so forth.

If you play without a category, it could possibly go like this: “Tree” > “Wood” > “Bench” > “Park” > “Flowers” > “Greenhouse” > “Nursery” > “Children” > “School” > “Playground” > “Swing” > “Music” > “Tuba” > “Horn” > “Car”…

The more abstract your associations, the harder for the people following on, but let your group judge on whether an association is valid or not!

Requirements: Pen & a slip of paper for each person.

Each person needs to write their name & one unknown fact about themselves on a slip of paper.

Give them one minute to write their fact down and then fold it up and place it in a bowl or hat.

After everyone has written their fact down, the game coordinator reads out the fact & the group guesses who it is about.

It's often a fun way to get to know something about others & to hear some interesting stories!

Requirements: Pen & a slip of paper for each person.

Write down the names of everyone in the group on pieces of paper, fold them and put them into a bowl.

Let each person draw a name out of the bowl – if they get their own name they can put it back and choose another.

Once they have a name, they need to write down three characteristics about the person they were given. These characteristics can be a little-known fact, or a quality they possess, or a catchphrase they have. You may not write down a physical quality of theirs. Even if you don't know the person well you can be creative in your characteristics. Treat it like you're writing clues for a crossword puzzle!

Once everyone has written their three characteristics place the papers back in the bowl & read out the characteristics and allow the group to guess who is being described.

Requirements: Pen and a slip of paper for each person.

Hand out a slip of paper & pen to each person in your group.

Explain that this game is based on the premise of the talking game "broken telephone", where a phrase is passed from person to person until the final person reveals what they think the original phrase was.

Except, in this version of the game, we use sentences & pictures to create the chain.

– Person one writes a sentence on their paper & shows it to person two.
– Person two then draws a picture based on the sentence they have just read & shows their picture to person three.
– Person three once again writes a sentence based on the picture they have just been shown & shows it to person four.
– Person four draws what they have read & shows it to person five who once again writes a sentence.

And so on and so forth until ending with a sentence which the last person reads out to the group.

Generally the final sentence is nothing like the first one & it's always fun to piece together the pictures & sentences afterward to see where it all went wrong!