Call of the wild
- The person leading the game should quietly give everyone an animal name. They should choose animals that have a distinct noise – dogs, sheep, and wolves work great, but this isn’t the time to choose camels.
- Everyone should jumble up around the space. They should wander around making their animal’s noise.
- At the same time, everyone should try to listen to the noises other people are making.
- The person leading the game should shout ‘jungle!’ (or perhaps farmyard, depending on the animals). Then, everyone should try to get into a group with the people with the same animal as them. No one can talk – they can only communicate using their animal's noise.
- Once everyone’s in a group, the person leading the game should visit each group in turn. One at a time, the group should make their original noise. If everyone’s making the same noise, they’ve succeeded. If some people don’t match, they should listen out to the other groups and try and spot where they should be.
Reflection
This activity needed everyone to communicate without talking. Everyone should find a partner and talk together about how easy they found telling the animal noises a part. In their pairs, everyone should think about how it could be made easier, for example, if people used actions, or took it in turns to make noises rather than all making noise at once. Pairs should share their ideas with everyone else. Everyone should talk about how they found the right group when they needed to – what techniques did they use to solve the problem? People’s ideas could include listening very carefully or making eye contact with the people who were the same animal.
Safety
All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.
You could play a more challenging game by giving everyone a different animal to make the sound of. Without talking, everyone should get into a line based on the animal’s size, with the smallest at one end and the biggest at the other. Alternatively, everyone could walk around making their animal noises, and then try to name as many animals in the room as possible.
People could do a sign or an action instead of making a noise, if that works better for people. This would make the game quieter, too.
All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.
You could play this game with endangered animals, as part of requirement three of the Beaver Global Issues Activity Badge.