A set of games that I've found useful as quick breaks in the classroom and workshops. As mentioned in Tools for Teachers.

Categories

Get students up on the whiteboard, teams of 4 or 5. They choose a letter, then you say ‘places’ and they have to come up with as many as possible.

Or ‘names’.

(think scattergories)

‘Things that are cold!’

Zap

  • Players stand in a circle, roughly two metres apart.
  • Play is passed from one player to another by use of the actions “zip”, “zap”, and “boing”:
    • Zip: A player clasps their hands with thumbs raised and index fingers pointing to an adjacent person in the circle and says “zip”; play passes to that person.
    • Zap: A player clasps their hands as in Zip, but pointing to any non-adjacent person in the circle, and says “zap”; play passes to that person.
    • Boing: A player performs a star jump and says “boing”; play passes back to the previous player.
  • Players who make a mistake are eliminated.
  • The game ends when there are only two players left.

(instructions above rom Wikipedia)

Holiday follow up

1. Think about one thing that you most enjoyed in the holidays.

2. Find someone in the class with whom you’ve never spoken before, tell each other your thing, and each person has to ask at least 1 follow up question.

Clap a rhythm

Teacher claps a rhythm, students try to copy. Make it increasingly difficult/complex. Nominate a student to be leader.

(after the above). Double this that

Teacher makes up rhyme like ‘double left left right’, and students have to do high fives as a double, left, or right. (working in pairs, like all classic clapping games)

harder: introduce ‘clap’ also.

harder: make longer, e.g., ‘double left , double right, double double left right’ (then you could add clap too!!!)

Arm spans

Form a line from longest to shortest arm span, without comparing directly (in silence) compare (back to back)

Then say ‘Is the theory about arm span = height true?'

Four Corners

label each corner with a number 1, 2, 3 or 4

have one person be “it” – they sit blindfolded in the middle the of the room

everyone else picks a corner to stand in

“it” says a number and the people in that corner are out

people move to new corners and “it” keeps saying numbers until there is just 1 person left

Balance a book

Students balance a book on their head, then they must do a lap of the room and go back to their seat.

Bounce into lolly jar

Students try to bounce a ball into the lolly jar, if they get it, they win one. (or throw ball into bag, or anything like that really, works without the lollies too).

Line up

Have students line up by where their birthday falls in the year, e.g., from Jan 1st to Dec 31st, without talking, hand signals only.

Count to 25

Try to get the class to collectively count to 25 (or however many students there are in the class). But in a random order, with no communication! Make it more maths-ey by having them count in 2s, 3s, 5s and to a diff total (e.g., 20 students in class, counting by 5s, the goal is to get to 100).

Heads Up & Up

7 kids are up in front of the classroom and all others have their heads on their desks with their thumbs up. Each of the 7 tap one person and they put their thumb down. Once all students choose one person, you say “heads up- 7 up” Those 7 stand and try to figure out who picked them.

Chinese Whispers sentences

Elephants cannot tango

My puppy tracked mud all over the kitchen floor.

A million monkeys sat down and typed Shakespeare.

The quick brown fox jumped over a lazy dog eating a hamburger.

We found some aliens like to play with things like animations.

Find It Fast

Use an online letter die to generate a random letter. Students have to find and touch something (not someone) that begins with that letter. http://letterdice.iphonemarks.com/

Onomatopoeia

Pick a student, they pick an animal, whole class makes the sound of that animal.

Twisted phantom fingers

1. Stand up.

2. Clap and miss (that is, move your hands past each other following a clapping motion)

3. Link hands and bring both hands up and through past your chest (you should be holding hands with yourself, with your fingers interlinked, arms outstretched, and thumbs down.

4. Bring hands in and towards your body, then up between your arms so your fingers are facing up

 5. A partner points to one of your fingers (without touching it)

6. You try to move that finger

Ear nose switch

Be careful, I poked my eye trying to do this one fast!

1. Stand up.

2. Take your right hand and grab your left ear. Keep your right arm close to your body.

3. Now take your left hand and touch your nose.

4. Uncross your arms and move your left hand to your right ear and your right hand to your nose. Your left arm should now be closest to your body. 5. Switch back and forth as fast as you can

Gotcha

Purpose: Try to grab another person’s finger on one side of you, while at the same avoid being grabbed by the person on the other side of you.

1. Stand up and get into groups of 3-10 people.

2. Form a circle with your group.

3. Each person should hold out their hand with their palm flat and facing up. Now take your right hand index finger and point it directly into the palm of the person to your right.

4. When the instructor says “Gotcha”, you are to try to grab the person’s finger that is in your palm, and at the same , avoid being grabbed by the person you are pointing to.

5. Repeat with your arms crossed.

Vary if fingers are too fragile, e.g., placing forearm in palm, etc.

Blink and snap

1. Stand Up.

2. Blink your left eye and snap your right hand finger and thumb at the same time.

3. Now blink your right eye and snap your left hand finger and thumb at the same time.

4. Go back and forth as fast as you can

5. Comment on how silly everyone looks

Bunny stand-off

1. Stand Up.

2. . Make a gun with your right index finger and thumb. Keep your other fingers tucked in.

3. With your left hand make a two eared ‘bunny'

4. Now switch and make a bunny with your right hand and a gun with your left.

5. Keep switching back and forth as fast as you can

Pen flip

1. Stand Up.

2. Take a pen and flip it ONE REVOLUTION.

3. Now do the same thing with your other hand.

4. Now get a pen for both hands and try to do both pens at the same time.

5. If you really are good at that, then try to throw the pens up into the air and catch them in opposite hands. This is tough.

6. Increase the number of revolutions required

Hands brain break

1. Stand Up.

2. Start by waving your right hand in front of you from left to right. Your palm should be facing away from you while keeping your hand with your fingers pointing up.

3. Now stop that hand and have your left hand in front of you waving it up and down.

4. Now practice moving them at the SAME TIME. Do not move your hands going diagonally.

5. Now switch to have your right hand up and down and your left hand left and right. Do this faster and switch often to make it more difficult.

6. Lastly, to increase the difficulty, have your arms crossed while doing this.

Thumb War or Peace is a brain break done with a partner.

1. Thumb War is easy: Simply lock fingers together and then tap alternately with your thumbs to the chant: “One, two, three, four, I declare a thumb war”. Then you can get started with the war. The first person to pin the others thumb down for three seconds so they can't move it is declared the winner.

2. Thumb Peace: Lock your fingers together. You will try to work together to outline the numbers 0-9 with your thumbs one at a time. Your thumbs will need to work together while making each number. So You will have to decide who will be writing the number forwards and who will write it backwards.

ABC/123

1. Stand Up

2. Use your index finger and write a large “A” in the air out in front of you and at the same time say out loud the number “1”.

3. Now use your index finger and write a large “B” in the air out in front of you and at the same time say out loud the number “2”.

4. Continue writing the letters in the air and saying the numbers out loud as far as you can go or until the end of the alphabet.

Extra Challenge: Alternate saying the letter and then the number, do alphabet or count backwards, etc.

The Crab

1. Stand Up

2. Put your arms out in front of you and match your fingers from each hand together and then match your thumbs together.

3. Now put your middle fingers so that the knuckles touch. Keep them flat against each other.

4. Now un-touch and retouch your thumbs.

5. Now un-touch and retouch your index fingers.

6. Now un-touch and retouch your pinkies

7. Lastly, un-touch and retouch your ring fingers

Good luck. This one was difficult.

Itsy Bitsy Spider

1. Stand up.

2. Put your hands out in front of you.

3. Take your right hand thumb and touch it to your left hand index finger.

4. Now take your right hand index finger and touch it to your left hand thumb.

5. Rotate both hands to move upward so that you can now reach your right hand thumb to your left hand index finger. Then keep rotating your fingers and thumbs so that you are “walking up the water spout”

6. Now do this behind your back. Try going “down the spout” as well.

7. Once you've mastered this, then do the same process with your index finger and your pinkie. This is tough.

Balance a ruler

1. Start with a 1m ruler and balance it on a finger or palm, progress to smaller rulers (then even to a pen) as time goes on.

2. Give two students rulers, get them to vs each other, who can balance the ruler on their hand for the longest.