We all need a bit of festive fun in the lead up to Christmas, so here’s a festive adaptation of one of my favourite games.
Christmas Characters – A Christmas Energiser! A Co-operation group game
This game is the same as Fruit Salad, though with a Christmas theme!
Purposes
- To build up group trust through shared laughter and movement
- To provide an opportunity for children to play together in a non-competitive manner
- To encourage children to share a limited amount of space
What you will need
A circle of chairs with a clear space in the middle of the circle and enough room for children to move. There should be one less chair in the circle than the number of participants, i.e., if there are 30 players, there should be 29 chairs.
What to do
- Ask the children to sit in the circle of chairs.
- Going around the circle, each child is given the name of one of three Christmassy characters, e.g., Santa, Rudolf, elves – You can get ideas from the children. Everyone needs to have a Christmas character that they can remember.
- Start by standing in the centre of the circle and calling out the Christmas characters. Everyone who is that character (e.g., all the ‘Santa’s’) must get up and quickly move to an empty chair, including the teacher. Those who are not ‘Santa’s’ remain seated. Whoever ends up without a chair then takes a turn in the middle, calling out the name of one group of the Christmas characters again.
- To get everyone to move all at once, the person in the middle calls out ‘Christmas characters.’
- Once the children understand the game, speed up the time between children claiming chairs and the next person calling out.
Background information
Because this activity does not depend on physical skills, it enables all children to participate without having to worry about being laughed at for making mistakes or about embarrassing themselves because they do not have prior skills. It also encourages the quieter students to get up and enjoy moving around rather than sitting quietly. At the same time, the game provides the opportunity for the children to use space co-operatively.
