Circle Game Ice Breakers

Game #1 - Suitable for kids or adults.
Equipment:
One ball. (Soccer balls or basketballs work well.)
Background music - such as a keyboard would provide.
Game:
Stand in a circle. Give one person a ball.

The person with the ball says his/her name (either real name or pseudonym - i.e., a famous composer) on beat one. Beat two - s/he bounces it on the floor towards someone else in the circle. Beat three - the ball is caught by someone else in the circle, and that person says his/her name when they catch the ball. Thus:

Mozart (bounce); Beethoven (bounce); Chopin (bounce); etc.

You can make this more challenging by picking up the tempo of the background beat. - Pamela Rezach

Game #2 - Suitable for adults or kids.

Sit in a circle of chairs that has one less chair than the number of people participating. The person in the middle (IT) names a place or says something that some people, but not everyone, has done. For example, "If you like chocolate ice cream," "If you ever lived outside the U.S.," "If you've ever tried sushi," etc.

Anyone who can agree with the statement must get up and move to another chair. The new chair can't be the seat next to them or the one they had previously. This is repeated with a new IT until everyone has had a turn. (This was a church icebreaker done with the parents of our kids youth group. Twenty minutes later, we still weren't done.)

Since we had fun with it, I taught it to my older music classes. My fifth and sixth graders loved it. You do have to be careful that they don't use a negative qualifer (i.e., "If you think ___ is a dork.") Usually, the only problem is they have so much fun that no one can hear IT speak.

A variation on this game is to have volunteer(s) sing a song. The IT and another person in the circle try to guess the song. Whoever guesses the song correctly first gets to be IT next. (You don't have to change seats, but keep the pace going.) Be careful or it can become a Top 40 parade. To avoid this, limit song choices to particular subjects or singers. - Chris Ann McClure; Sherwood, North Dakota

Game #3 - Two Truths and a Lie - Suitable for adults or kids.

Each person makes three statements about themselves, two of which are true and one of which is not. Then the rest of the group has to figure out which statements are which. I've played this in small groups (four to six in a group) where we verbally responded with our answers. In a larger group, you can write your statements down and have one person read them. Then, each person in the group writes down which statements they think are false for each person. The answers are counted up at the end to see who got the most right. - Ann Wells; Waleska, GA