Games ideas - quick games

The Knot

Everyone stands in a tight circle, closes their eyes, and puts their arms up in front of them, then joins hands with TWO different people opposite them in the circle. Then they have to open their eyes and untangle themselves without breaking hands, to form a circle.  Sometimes people end up back-to-front, or sometimes with 2 separate circles - this is fine.

The Mummy

Each team of three has toilet rolls.  Two people have to wrap the third person in bandages to look like a mummy. The winning team is the best-wrapped mummy in a set time, e.g. 3 minutes.

Port and Starboard

Girls run around. Leader calls out actions – last ones out. Calls
  Port - run to the left hand side of the room
  Starboard - run to the right hand side of the room
  Climb up the rigging – pretend to climb up a rope
  Down in the hold - crouch down
  Scrub the decks - pretend to scrub the decks
  On the look out - look out through the telescope
  Captain’s coming – salute
  Dance the hornpipe - dance a hornpipe
  Ship's sinking - get into a straight line down the centre of the
room 

Beans

The leader calls out various types of beans and the girls perform the correct action.

•   Runner Beans - run around
•   Jumping Beans - jump
•   Baked Beans - lie out in the sun
•   Chilli beans - shiver
•   Frozen Beans - Stand still
•   Broad Beans - Stand with legs as far apart as possible
•   French Beans - say "Oh La La!"
  Last one doing the action is out 

Name that animal

Each girl has a sheet of paper and pen. Read out an instruction for them to draw, such as ‘has 4 large feet’ and each girl draws that, then passes her paper to the left.
They then draw the next instruction such as ‘has a long neck’ on the new sheet. Carry on passing until all clues are done.
Look at the finished pictures and identify the animal e,g, giraffe 

Sleeping Lions

All but one girl is a sleeping lion, and lies on the floor with their eyes closed.
The one who is on moves around the rest, trying to make them move or laugh. She is not allowed to touch them, but can tell jokes or try to trick them into moving.
Any that do move get up and join her, trying to get the others to move

Duster hockey
You will need: a duster, a piece of fabric or beanbag. Hockey sticks made from rolled up news paper. Something to mark 2 goals.
Split girls into 2 teams and have them line up on
either side of the 'field'. Number the girls in each
team. Place the duster in the middle. When their

number is called girls run forward and try to score a goal. The team with the most goals wins.

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1. Fizz Buzz

 You were named after someone  You like to sing
 You prefer books to movies
 You play a musical instrument
 You like to play a sport  You prefer milk
chocolate to white Chocolate  You have travelled somewhere
on a train this year
 You want to join Guides when
you’re old enough  You like to dance

Players sit in a circle. The player to go first says the number "1", and each player after adds one number in

turn. However, any number divisible by three is replaced by the word fizz and any divisible by five by the

word buzz. Numbers divisible by both become fizz buzz. A player who hesitates or makes a mistake is out. A simpler alternative game is any number that contains 3 or 5.
For example, a typical round of fizz buzz would start as follows:
1, 2, Fizz, 4, Buzz, Fizz, 7, 8, Fizz, Buzz, 11, Fizz, 13, 14, Fizz Buzz,

16, 17, Fizz, 19, Buzz, Fizz, 22, 23, Fizz, Buzz, 26, Fizz, 28, 29, Fizz Buzz, 31, 32, Fizz, 34, Buzz, Fizz, ...

Sculptor

Girls line up in two rows facing each other.
Girls in one row are the sculptor. Girls in the other row are the marble.

The sculptor can change one part of the statue each time, and has six moves to make the marble into a funny statue. Girls then change roles.

All the same

Give each girl a sheet of A4 paper. Call out the following instructions. No one is allowed talk and all must do
the same thing.
1. FOLD YOUR PAPER IN HALF
2. FOLD THIS DIAGONALLY 3. RIP OFF A CORNER
4. FOLD IN HALF AGAIN
5. FOLD IT ONE THIRD
6. RIP OFF A CORNER

Ask everyone to unfold their sheet of paper - Isn’t it strange how everyone ended up with a different result? 

Games Ideas - Full Unit Games

Zip Zap Boing!
People sit round in a circle.  One person begins by looking in a direction and saying 'zip' the next person then says zip and it continues round in a circle.

The next command is boing (difficult to type, as in the sound a spring makes.) This changes the direction of the zip and so it continues back round in the opposite direction.
Finally Zap. Zap throws the 'zip' across the circle. The person who says zap points to who they want to have the zip. The receiver then looks in the direction they wish to continue play and the zip moves on.
Here comes the fun part!You can't boing a boing, you can't zap a zap, you can't boing a zap or zap a boing you can only zip a zap and zip a boing! Simple right? 
Fantastically fun game once people have mastered it!

 Beans

Can be played with any number.

The Guider calls out various types of beans and the girls perform the correct action.

• Runner Beans – run around 
• Jumping Beans – jump 
• Baked Beans – lie out in the sun
• Chilli Beans – shiver
• Frozen Beans – Stand still
• Broad Beans – Stand with legs as far apart as possible
• French Beans – say “Oh La La!”
• String Beans – stand still, arms straight up.
• Dwarf Beans – squat down
• Has Beans – fall on the floor 

Band aid Tag

Each girl has two Band-Aids (her 2 hands). When tagged by another girl she covers the tagged spot with a Band-Aid. If she is tagged and has no more Band-Aids, she sits down.

Set the game boundaries for the group. In this game all girls with a free hand (available Band-Aid) are IT. When game starts, all players try to tag the others. The objective is to be the last standing player. You can introduce other variations (ways to administer ‘first aid’ to those sitting so they can re-enter the game, such as tapping on head, perhaps also saying the girl’s name).

Duck-Duck-Goose

Sit the girls in a circle. One girl walks around the outside of the circle, tapping each girl on the head saying “duck, duck…” At some point she changes the name to “Goose!” The “goose” must get up and chase the caller around the circle. The first of the two of them to get back to the place where the “goose” was sitting gets to sit back down, and the other then must go around the circle again, tapping each girl on the head saying “duck, duck, GOOSE!”

Frogs and Ants

This is a large group tag game. In a group of 30 or so, assign 5 frogs to be “IT” and the rest of the players are ants. Designate the playing area, including a safe zone (the ant colony). Start the game by having the ants run around the playing area. The object of the game is for the frogs to touch the ants. Once an ant is touched, it must lay on its back with both arms and both legs in the air. This cry for help signals FOUR ants to rescue their fellow ant. A rescue is successful if four ants (all arriving at the same time) can carry their fellow ant to the safety of the colony where it is reborn to play again. The four rescue ants must arrive at the injured ant at the same time and start working or risk being touched by a frog and becoming injured ants themselves. If there are four ants attached and working at the same time, they cannot be touched by a frog. The working ants must transport the injured ant to the safe area (colony) where all can then rejoin the game in progress.

Penguin Tag

Girls must keep their knees together and elbows glued to the side of their bodies. Everyone is ‘it’ – you tag others by waddling over and tagging them lightly with your flippers. Fun to watch & fun to do!

	Pass it on!
Duration: five minutesSections: allWhat you need: a ball, balloon or beanbag

Try these quick throwing, catching and relay games to fill a spare five minutes and burn off some energy! They are also a great way to develop skills.
In a circle: Throw the ball as quickly as possible across the circle, saying the person's name as you throw the ball. Use a number of balls to make this more difficult, or challenge the participants to do an action before they catch the ball, perhaps spin around or kneel down.
As a relay: In teams stand in lines and pass the ball over head and under legs as a relay - the person at the front who receives the ball last runs to the back and the winners are the team that have the original person back in front first. Alternatively get the girls to pass the ball using your elbows, knees or feet. Use a water balloon or a plastic cup of water to add a bit of drama!
Target practice: Use a container like an empty bin or you could use a skipping rope to make a circle shape on the floor and set up a start line. Give each girl three turns and the challenge is to get all three into the target. If it gets too easy, move the target further away or use a smaller container.
Human croquet: Ask one girl per team to be a croquet hoop. The team's aim is to roll the ball through their team-mate's legs, once each, as quickly as possible in a relay. If a team member misses, they have to go and collect the ball and try again. Once one person has played, it's their turn to be the croquet hoop. 

	Human knot
Duration: up to ten minutesSections: Brownies, Guides, The Senior Section

This game is quick, but not so easy and helps the girls to practise working in a team. 

1. Ask girls to form a circle, all holding hands. 
2. Choose one patrol or six to step outside the circle and close their eyes. 
3. Give the rest of the group two minutes to make the biggest human knot that they can by moving around in the circle. They should hold hands all the time. 
4. Ask the patrol to open their eyes and try to untangle the human knot by directing the girls in the circle. It often proves difficult! 

	Sausage – who can keep a straight face?
Duration: five minutes Sections: all

This is another fun game to get the girls laughing!

1. Ask one girl to be the volunteer. 
2. She stands in the middle of the circle. 
3. The others take turns to ask her questions, to which she can only answer 'sausage' (or any other word you choose). 
4. If she laughs, she's out! Swap places and give everyone a chance to have a go! 

Pairs

Duration: five minutesSections: Brownies, Guides, The Senior SectionWhat you need: cards or slips of paper with matching pairs on them. The pairs should be separated and shuffled. 

The aim of this game is to find your matching partner.

1. Hand out one card to each girl. 
2. They must then find their matching partner. 
3. They should then sit down and wait for the rest of the group to get into pairs. 

Me too!

Duration: until they get bored or run out of questions! Sections: Brownies, GuidesWhat you need: one chair per person

Most getting-to-know-you games focus on what is different about everyone. This game will help your girls to realise that they are alike in many ways.

1. Ask each girl to get a chair and arrange them in a circle, facing inwards. One girl should be without a chair and standing in the middle of the circle. 
2. The girl in the middle shouts out a statement such as, ‘I have two sisters’. If that is true of someone sitting down, they should stand up and shout, ‘Me too!’ 
3. The girls who have stood up and shouted, and the girl who was standing in the middle, must then run around and find a different chair to sit on. 
4. The girls are not allowed to sit back on their original chair or the chairs on either side of it. 
5. The girl left without a chair must stand in the middle and ask a new question. 

Pairs

Duration: five minutesSections: Brownies, Guides, The Senior SectionWhat you need: cards or slips of paper with matching pairs on them. The pairs should be separated and shuffled.

Suggested pairs

• Ham and eggs 
• Salt and pepper 
• Punch and Judy 
• Romeo and Juliet 
• Needle and thread 
• Bangers and mash 
• Horse and cart 
  Cheese and biscuits􏰀  
• Apples and pears 

Yes or no game

Duration: 20 minutesSections: Brownies, Guides, The Senior Section
What you need: a list of questions (or you could make them up on the spot)

This game involves movement, questions and laughter.

1. The girls should get a chair, put them in a circle and sit down. 
2. The Leader then asks all the girls a question. It must be a question where the answer can only be yes or no. 
3. If the answer is yes, the girl must move one place to her left. 
4. If the answer is no, the girl must move one place to her right. 
5. This means that everyone will be moving at the same time, even if this means sitting on someone’s lap! 
6. You can keep going until you have used up all your questions or until someone has made a full circuit back to their original chair. 

Example questions

• 􏰀  Do you have a pet? 
• 􏰀  Are your eyes blue? 
• 􏰀  Do you like cornflakes? 
• 􏰀  Do you like watching football? 
• 􏰀  Did you go on camp last year? 
• 􏰀  Have you been to America? 
• 􏰀  Do you know how to spell necessary? 
• 􏰀  Do you still live in the town/country where you were born? 
• 􏰀  Can you remember the Promise? 

Games Ideas - Patrols

Can you do this?

1. Split into patrols (at least 4 girls per group).
2. Let them know what equipment/timescale/space, etc is available and ask them to each write a challenge on a slip of paper. Point out that they may end up doing some of their own challenges.
3. Example Challenges - walk with a cup on your head, scream for 10 seconds, skip 50 times, juggle 3 beanbags, scare someone, do the chicken dance, act like a clown - so much noise and laughter and we've still got at least half the challenges left for another night...
4. All the challenges are folded up and go in a box. (Probably best if leaders check and veto anything unsuitable or not practical, but it doesn't matter if a challenge appears twice).
5. The girls number themselves within their group, e.g 1-6 (if there are unequal groups then the smaller groups need someone to have two numbers or they may take it in turns to be the extra number).
6. Number slips of paper, enough for the number of challenges, and put in in another box (so if there are 24 challenges and four groups of six girls, you need 4 slips with number 1, 4 with number 2 and so on - i.e. 24 slips in total).
7. To play, simply pull out a number and a challenge - everyone with that number (i..e on per patrol) attempts the challenge. You can have a scoring system of best/fastest/etc, but ours were having so much fun and asking if they could try the challenges when it wasn't their turn that we didn't bother!

Five Minute Fillers

The following games were downloaded from the Girlguidng Website, in their Five-Minute-fillers PDF

	Origami races – who’s the quickest?
Duration: five minutes Sections: Brownies, Guides, The Senior Section What you need: squares of paper of any colour, a few per person – can be cut out of an A4 sheet

1. Print out or watch these origami tutorials - everything from flowers to sea creatures.
   
2. Make sure everyone has practised making the shape decided on, then start racing! You could throw paper aeroplanes/birds and see whose can fly the longest distance or you could make paper boats and float them in a paddling pool/pond.
   
3. Once everyone is practised at making the shape, you can run these races with very little preparation whenever there are five minutes to fill. Why not start a leader board with the quickest times?
   

Encourage the girls to think of ways to use the origami once they've made it, perhaps as decorations. Always recycle the paper you've used when you've finished it. 

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Game Ideas - Patrol Challenges

A4 paper challenge

You have been given 20 sheets of A4 paper, 2 pairs of scissors and a roll of sellotape. There is nothing else. 

Your challenge is to create the following. You are free to choose how to use your time and your paper. Remember this is about TEAMWORK.

Every team must complete tasks 1-4

1. Create the longest paper chain

2. Stretch 1 whole sheet of paper as far as you can - you may need to tear or cut the paper but it must stay in 1 piece. No joins, no glue, no sellotape.

3. Fly the furthest paper aeroplane

4. Make the tallest structure that can stand on its own and will hold an egg

For each challenge

- 1st place - 100 points

- 2nd place - 50 points

- 3rd place - 20 points

- 4th place - 10 points

Bonus challenges (if you choose to do them) 20 points each

- Make a paper hat and wear it

- Make a fortune teller

- Make a Chinese paper lantern

- Make a patterned snowflake

Anyone caught cheating will have 20 points deducted!

Repeat offenders may have an unlimited number of points deducted!

20 Tasks in 20 minutes

Each patrol is given 20 tasks to do.  At least 3 members must complete every activity (you can change this bit). They have to complete as many of the 20 tasks as possible in the time.  Leader selects the tasks from this list:

	Task	Resources
	Draw the Guide badge
	make structures / models / sculptures from cocktail sticks and grapes	Grapes, cocktail sticks
	transport marbles from one end of the hall to the other using just toilet roll
	Throw and catch a bean bag 10 times at least 4m apart	Beanbags
	Make a cup of tea for a leader or young leader	Tea-making stuff
	Make a table decoration	Napkins
	Set a formal dinner table for 2	Table settings
	Draw a portrait of one of the leaders
	Get half your patrol upside down
	Find out the sum of the current ages of everyone in the patrol
	Make a pyramid at least 1 1/2 times the height of a piece of spaghetti	Spaghetti & Sticky tape
	Get a Young Leader a glass of water
	Write out the Guide promise	Paper, Pens
	Get out a table & chairs for your patrol
	Do 10 star jumps
	Plait the hair of someone in your patrol	Hair bobble
	Make up a limerick	Paper, pens
	Think of an animal for each letter of the alphabet	Paper, pens
	Give someone a hug
	Pay 3 people from a different patrol a compliment
	Draw a map of the building	Paper, pens
	Tie 3 bows	Ribbons
	Find out who can do the best evil witch laugh in your patrol, then go and demonstrate to a leader
	Make an origami animal	Origami paper
	2 people Hulahoop for 1 minute
	Walk round the room twice with a plastic cup on your head
	Group skip with 2 holding rope and 2 skipping at the same time  -  do at least 10 jumps with 2
	Group skip – how many people can you get jumping together?

20 Tasks in 20 minutes

Each patrol is given 20 tasks to do.  At least 3 members must complete every activity (you