Indoor Classroom Games

Drawing Together

• Prior to the start of the game, print out several copies of a simply drawn picture you can find on the Internet. Group your students into pairs and seat them down in their desks as they face each other. Put up a poster board or some other form of partition in between the pairs so they can no longer see each other. Hand one of the players---the leader---the picture and give the other player---the drawer---a piece of paper and a writing utensil. When you say "Go," the leaders have to give instructions to the drawers to recreate the picture. After about five minutes, tell everyone to stop and hold up their pictures. Survey them all and pick out which of the pairs did the best job working together based on the similarity of the recreated version of the picture to the original.

Do as I Say, Not as I Do

• Pick one of your students (the leader) to stand at the front of the classroom while the rest of the group stands in an open space facing her. Tell the leader that she must try and confuse the other students by telling them to perform one action while she acts out another. For instance, while she tells the students to bounce on one foot, she rubs her stomach. The students all have to perform the action she tells them to perform. Any time a player performs the same action as the leader, he gets eliminated from the game. The last person standing, having only performed what the leader said throughout the game, wins.

Hunt for Candy

• Bring several bags or containers of candy to class. Hide the candies around the room before you play. Then, divide the students into about five teams. The teams all have to decide on an animal noise that distinguishes them from the other teams. Animals such as dogs, horses and ducks all have distinct noises perfect for the game. The teams also pick one person to play the leader. The leader of each team gets blindfolded and separated from their teammates. The teammates search for the candies, and when they find them they call out their animal noise for their leader to find them and take the candy from the hiding spot. The team with the most candy at the end of the game wins.