Activities For Icebreakers in Youth Groups

Name Games

• Name games are effective icebreaker activities that help everyone in the group learn one another's names. One activity is to have each child introduce himself or herself and give an adjective that describes the individual, which starts with the same letter as the child's first name. For instance, if a child's name is Calvin, he may say he is cool. A girl named Diane may say she is daring.

  Another name game icebreaker is for all the kids to introduce themselves, then stand in a circle. One by one, each child will have to go around the circle and say the names of all the others out loud.

Story Time

• Sit all of the youths in a circle on the floor. For this story time activity, the group will make up a story. The youth group leader starts the story with "Once upon a time there lived a --." The person to the right will fill in the blank. Then, that child must start another sentence, which the next person to the right will complete. The process repeats itself until everyone has had one or two turns and the story is at a good ending point.

Two Truths and a Lie

• This activity lets kids share something unique about themselves, such as hidden talents or famous people to whom they are related. Each kid is given a piece of paper and is instructed to write down two things that are true and one thing that is a lie. The things that are true should be interesting facts about the child that nobody else might know. The group leader will collect the papers and read them out loud after introducing each child. The group must guess which of the three items is the lie.

Physical Activities

• Get your youth group kids energized with physical icebreaker activities. The human knot is a well-known activity that requires students to become entangled by linking arms; they must work together to untangle themselves. (See References 2)

  Stinger is another activity that gets children moving. For stinger, all the kids close their eyes. When the leader taps a kid's shoulder, that child secretly becomes the "bee" in the group. The kids open their eyes and walk around shaking hands with one another. The stinger or bee will scratch the inside of each child's hand during the handshake. If a child's hand is scratched, the child must wait 10 seconds and then fall to the floor. The objective is for the kids to figure out who the stinger is and stay alive. (See References 3)