Mime time
Before you begin
- Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
- Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers.
Play the game
- Everyone should split into teams of about four to six players. Adjust the sizes as you need to, depending on your group.
- Each team should line up one behind the other, facing the same direction.
- The person leading the game should ask the last person in each team to turn around to face them, and take a few steps away from their team. Give this person a simple message, for example, ‘I love apples’, ‘we’re going rock climbing’, or ‘we need to tidy up’.
- You don’t need to give all the teams the same message. You could make the messages relate to an activity or theme you’ll be doing.
- The player with the message should return to their place in the line.
- The player with the message should call the name of the person in front of them. The person in front of them should turn around and the player with the message should mime their message using actions and facial expressions. They can’t say any words or use any noises.
- When the player in front of them thinks they’ve got it, they should turn around to call the name of the person in front of them and repeat step six.
- The message should travel all the way up the line, one person at a time.
- Once they’ve seen the mime, the person at the front of the line should tell everyone what they think the message might be.
- The person at the back of the line should tell the person at the front of the line if they’re right. Did the message change much?
Reflection
This activity was a chance for everyone to communicate in a slightly different way.
People often rely on talking to each other, so passing messages on without talking (or writing, or drawing) can be tricky. How did people feel during this game?
Some people may have felt frustrated when they couldn’t get a message across, or confused if a message wasn’t clear. Can anyone think of another time it might be difficult to communicate?
People may think about when two people don’t speak the same language, or people with hearing difficulties. Well done for everyone for giving it a go.
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.
It’s up to you how tricky the messages are. You might want to start with really simple ones, then play again, with people in a different order, to make it more challenging.
Abstract messages will be harder than actions, for example, ‘someone doing star jumps’ would be easier than ‘I love milk’.
If people don’t want to tap others on the shoulder or don’t want to be tapped, you could allow them to attract the person’s attention by saying their name.
If you do this, explain that it’s the only time anyone is allowed to speak.
All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.
