Sports charades
You’ll need
- Scrap paper
- Pens or pencils
- Items of sporting equipment or clothing
- Sports charades cards
- Large bowl
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.
- Cut up the sports charades sheet. Fold the pieces and put them in a bowl.
- Encourage everyone to bring in some of the clothing or equipment needed for a sport that they play or participate in regularly (a football, swimming goggles, and so on).
Get ready for charades
- As everyone to take a pen or pencil and write down a sport that they like to watch or play. Fold these suggestions up and add them to the bowl of sports charades.
- Create a stage where the charades will be performed. There could be more than one stage if you have a large space or lots of people in the group.
Act it out
- Players must act out the sport written on the piece of paper they pick from the bowl. If they don’t know what the sport is, they can pick again. Players cannot say words but they can make noises during their charade.
- Everyone else should try to guess what the sport is. The player should shake their head at incorrect guesses and continue acting until the sport is guessed correctly.
- If anyone in the group does this sport, they should explain the basic rules and can show some of the clothing and equipment needed if they have brought it in.
- Make sure everyone has the opportunity to have a turn at acting out a charade if they want to.
- Gather everyone back together and chat about how it went. What did they do to be a good team player and help their team? Can they think of other types of teams and the roles in them?
Reflection
This game helped you learn more about different sports. Playing sport forms an important part of a healthy lifestyle. Which new sports did you learn about? Were there any that you were interested to try out, now that you know about them? What things help you to get better at your chosen sport?
This game was also about being physically active. What do you enjoy about playing sports and being physically active? Why do you think it is an important thing to do? If you haven’t found a sport that you really enjoy, how else can you be physically active?
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.
If your group isn’t familiar with sports, take out some of the unfamiliar ones from the list of charades or discuss them before you play the game. You could build this activity into a longer sports session, with an interactive element such as a quiz or roleplay to explain the rules of particular sports, or a taster session or demonstration so the group can try some of the sports.
If anyone is uncomfortable doing the charade in front of everyone, they could do it to a small group or as a one-on-one discussion instead.
All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.
Tie this into the Hobbies Activity Badge by adding some hobbies into the bowl of charades, along with sports.