Ice breakers for Youth Group

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MilitaryWife91

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Hello,

Does anyone have ideas for ice breakers for a youth group? We will have our first meeting soon. I would like to foster a strong bond between the kids, some of whom have never met.

Thank you in advance for your help,
MW
 
A game can work pretty good or somtimes just going in a circle asking everybody thier name, school, and somthing about them also helps. Just remember activities should be clever allowing the kids to work together like spliting them up into teams and such.
 
One that worked really well at a Newman Center I went to a year ago was having a list of different attributes, and you had to go around for ten, fifteen minutes and find someone with that attiribute to sign off on your sheet. For example the page would look like this:

_________________ is a convert
_________________ went to Catholic School
_________________ wants to be a doctor
_________________ likes to cook
_________________ prays a daily rosary
_________________ likes math
_________________ is the youngest child

Helped you get to know others and things about them really easily. At the end the one with the most signatures got a prize.
 
How big is your group?

Here are a couple that go fairly quickly, but get kids laughing…

Clump it–form groups according to various attributes/characteristics (gender, color of hair, type of shoes they are wearing, etc.) It works best if you have 8-10 different characteristics and a fairly large space for moving around.

Line up–could be done with boys against girls or with the group as a whole. Have the kids arrange themselves from shortest to tallest, according to age, according to birth date, etc.) This gets the kids talking to each other (for the age/birth date) and kills a little time.

One that takes a little more time-Portrait Introductions–Have the teens pair up with someone they don’t know, or don’t know very well. Give each pair an ‘interview’ sheet with simple questions like, “How many siblings do you have?” What is your favorite way to spend an afternoon? "What do you want to be when you ‘grow up’? etc. Allow about 6 minutes for the pairs to inteview each other. Next, pass out blank paper and markers and give the kids another 5-6 minutes to draw a picture that represents what they discovered about the other person during the interview (no words allowed). Finally, have the pairs come up together and introduce each other using their drawings.

OR–You could skip the drawing part of above and just have the kids interview each other and then introduce each other to the group.

Kathy
 
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