Use your senses to sort it
You’ll need
- Scarves (such as neckers)
Discuss your five senses
- Everyone should sit in a circle.
- Try and name the five senses.
- Think of some of the ways we use the five senses - can you name how you've used each of your senses today?
- Think about how you might rely on your other senses more if you lost the ability to use one of them. For example, which senses may you use more if you lost your sense of sight? Or hearing? Or smell? Or touch? Or taste?
- Tell everyone they're going to play a game.
Play the game
- Everyone should line up in height order, from smallest to tallest. They can talk, look and move—and everyone should join in, including the grown ups! The person leading the game should time how long it takes everyone to get in the right order.
- Everyone should talk about how they got into the right order, and how easy or difficult it was.
- Everyone should mix themselves up, so they’re in a random order again.
- Everyone should gently tie their scarves over their eyes.
Neckers work perfectly for this, or you could use sleep masks or ask people to close their eyes without peeking.
- Now try to line up in height order again. This time, they’ve lost the use of one of their senses, so they’ll have to rely on other senses, such as talking, or (carefully!) touching each other’s heads. The person leading the game should time everyone to see how long it takes now.
It doesn’t matter too much if anyone can see a little bit or peeks. It’s still tricky to get the whole group working together.
- The person leading the game should reveal the two times. Everyone should think about how they found the second time. Was it easier or harder? How did they communicate? If they want to, everyone could play again with another order for the line, such as alphabetical order. It’s much easier if you can see the person next to you and you know their name!
- Take off the scarves and then everyone should mix themselves up, so they’re in a random order again.
- Everyone's going to do it one more time, but this time you'll lose the sense of hearing. Everyone will have to do either without making any noise, so person leading the game shouldn't be able to hear each other speak or whisper, or with everyone wearing ear defenders.
- This time everyone needs to line up in date of birth order from January to December. Again they’ll have to rely on other senses, such as sight. The person leading the game should time everyone to see how long it takes now.
- Everyone should think about how they found doing the task in silence. Was it easier or harder? How did they communicate?
Reflection
This activity helped you to discover your senses and work as a team.
How well did you work as a team? Was it more difficult to understand when one person talked at a time, or when lots of people talked at once? How did you know who to listen to and whether someone was talking to you or not?
What does this tell us about how we can communicate with people in our team clearly and effectively? It may help for one person to talk at once and to use someone’s name so they know you’re talking to them.
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.
You can split into smaller groups if you have too many people to get into one line. It’s probably helpful to practice a line-up without a blindfold first, so you get some clues about how to communicate.
You can make it trickier by taking away two senses, such as touch and sight. You could take away different senses for each person. Some people may not be able to see, while others may not be able to touch or hear.
You may want to try other day-to-day tasks while taking a sense away. Focus on things where the environment makes it easier or harder, such as getting into your meeting place, trying a new food, dancing to music or making a painting.
No one has to wear a blindfold—they could just close their eyes.
If they don’t want to, they could hold hands with another person to play as a pair. They could also watch everyone and give them some helpful hints and tips.
All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.
