Ice Breakers

Ask the group to imagine the following scenario: “Your house is on fire, and everyone is safe. You have 30 seconds to run through the house and collect three things you want to save. What would you grab?

Have each person make three statements: two true and one lie. For example: “I’ve never visited another state. I have six toes. I’m a descendant of the King of Norway.” The group tries to guess which statement is a lie.

Have everyone in your group stand in a circle. Each person in the group must hold the hands of two different people who are not standing next to them on their left and right. This creates a human knot. From here, let the group untangle the knot into a circle again without letting go of each other's hand.

Have your group line up in any order without speaking. For example, ask your group to line up in order from youngest to oldest. The prompt can be anything, as long as there is something they can order themselves by.

Ask each person to share their highs and lows from the week.

Have each person share something that makes them unique or unusual, like, “I hate Pizza” or “I've been to all Major League Baseball stadiums.”

Have the group find 10 things that all of them share in common (besides the obvious, e.g., that they are human or are students).

Write different categories on pieces of paper that the students will randomly pick: scary, funny, shocking, the best thing ever, the worst thing ever, memorable holiday, dog, movie, hospital, vacation, elbow, weird person, etc.) Have students randomly pick a category and share a personal story related to the word drawn.

Have a list of scrambled words that kids must unscramble. It can be a solo or team competition. Use popular words they can relate to. (Ex: Google most trendy words teens say). You can also give them words from a category, such as fruit, popular names, movie titles, school subjects, names in your group, etc.

Ask students to pair up with a partner and stand back to back. Give them 60 seconds to change five things about their appearance. When time is up, instruct the students to face each other and see if they can identify the five things that their partner changed.

Have everyone sit in a circle on the floor and hand them a toilet paper roll to pass around. Everyone should take as many pieces of toilet paper as they want but don’t tell them what it’s for. After everybody has passed around the roll, it is time to share. Everybody must share one fun fact about themselves for each piece of toilet paper they ripped from the roll.