Play Crown's Coming
You’ll need
- Hoop, chalk or masking tape to mark base (optional)
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.
Learn the actions
- Gather everyone together in a circle.
- Explain that you're going to play a royal version of Captain's Coming.
- One member of the group is the Royal Guard. This person will call out the actions. It could be a young member, young leader or adult volunteer.
- Everyone else should stand in the centre of the space, ready to respond to the commands with the appropriate action.
- Take time to practice the Royal Guard’s commands. You could choose a selection from or all the following:
-
- Buckingham Palace: Run to the left of the space
- Westminster Abbey: Run to the right of the space
- King’s coming: Bow to each other
- Polish the crown jewels: Crouch down and pretend to polish the crown jewels
- King’s crown: Place your hands either side of your head, like a crown
- King’s procession: Stride around the room
- Sit on the throne: Stop and pretend to sit down
- Wave to the crowd: Stand still and wave to everyone around you
- Hoist the flag: Pretend to pull a rope up the flagpole to pull up the flag
- King’s Horses: Move around the room like you’re riding a horse
- National anthem: Stand still and pretend to sing
- An adult volunteer or young leader could do the actions as they’re shouted out for people to copy. You may want to have a written or printed copy of the actions.
- Alternatively, if you want to people to become out as you play the game, you could add in these actions:
-
- Street party (5,4,6,2,3): Gather in groups of the shouted number and link arms in a circle to form a street party. Anyone not in the required number could be out.
- Trumpeters (5,4,6,2,3): Get into a row of the shouted number and pretend to play the trumpet. Anyone not in a row of the required number could be out.
Playing the game
- Once everyone knows the commands, play the game.
- You could have a practice round. Read out each action one by one and give people a bit more time to remember the action.
- Remember, you don’t have to use all the actions. You could also add it more actions as you go to make the game harder.
- You could start to get faster to make it harder and play it so the last person to do the action is out.
- The person left at the end of the game is the winner.
Reflection
This activity was about being active and having fun. Was it hard to remember the commands? How did you remember them? Which was the hardest action to remember?
Did you rely on other people to help you to remember, or did anyone come up with any techniques? Did it become harder when we added in the competitive elements? Most importantly, did everyone have fun? What was your favourite action? Can anyone think of their own action?
Do you think this game would be a good warm up and use lots of muscles? How could we make it a better warm up? Some suggestions might be you could move around the room until an action is called out.
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.
- Active games
The game area should be free of hazards. Explain the rules of the game clearly and have a clear way to communicate that the game must stop when needed. Take a look at our guidance on running active games safely.
- Contact games and activities
Make sure everyone understands what contact is acceptable, and monitor contact throughout the activity.
Introduce the commands at a pace suitable for the group.
You could label the playing space with the directions, such as Buckingham Palace, to help people find them.
Adapt the actions to suit your group. For example, pointing or shouting the direction instead of running towards it.
You should change the actions or select actions that everyone can do, so everyone can join in. If someone may struggle to play the game, they could call out the commands.
If some people may struggle to do the actions quickly, you could play the game so that no-one goes out.
A young leader or adult volunteer could stand by the caller and do the actions to help everyone remember, too.
No-one has to touch someone else, or be touched, if they don’t want to. Make sure everyone’s comfortable to do this or you could use an alternative action.
All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.
