Instructions for Good Icebreaker Questions

In terms of facilitation, a great way to help people get to know each other is to ask them fun questions that allow them to express their personality or interesting things about them.  Here is a list of fun, useful icebreaker questions to help break the ice:

• If you were a comic strip character, who would you be and why?
• What thought or message would you want to put in a fortune cookie?
• If you had to give up a favorite food, which would be the most difficult to give up?
• What is one food you’d never want to taste again?
• If you won a lottery ticket and had a million dollars, what would you do with it?
• You’ve been given access to a time machine.  Where and when would you travel to?
• If you could be any superhero and have super powers, which one would you like to have and why?
• Mount Rushmore honors four U.S. presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt.  If yuo could add any person to Mount Rushmore, who would you add and why?
• What award would you love to win and for what achievement?
• If you could transport yourself anywhere instantly, where would you go and why?
• In your opinion, which animal is the best (or most beautiful) and why?
• What is one item that you really should throw away, but probably never will?
• Growing up, what were your favorite toys to play with as a child? 

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Setup for Four Corners

Distribute a pen and sheet of paper for each player. Each person divides the sheet into four boxes/squares either by folding the paper in half twice (vertically and horizontally) or simply by drawing a horizontal and vertical line that crosses in the middle. For each square, each person will describe themselves in the form of drawings. Choose these four topics in advance. For example, in the top left square, everyone could draw “favorite hobbies,” while in the top right, people could illustrate “favorite place on earth for vacation,” the bottom left could be something like “if you were an animal, which one would you be?” and the bottom right could be something like “what are the most important things in your life?” Feel free to be as creative, hypothetical, or deep as you like.

Allow five to ten minutes to draw. When everyone is finished, gather them together and share the drawings as a group. This icebreaker is an excellent way for students to show-and-tell what makes them unique!

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This getting-to-know-you game usually does not take long, unless you choose to run it that way.  The recommended group size is small and medium groups, although with careful planning it might be possible to do this activity in a large group by splitting it into smaller groups.  An indoor setting is ideal.  This icebreaker is recommended for young children up through eighth grade.  It’s well suited for classrooms, camps, or other settings where people may not know each other very well yet.

Instructions for the String Game 

This activity needs a little bit of preparation work.  Purchase a big roll of yarn or string.  You can buy any color, or multiple colors if you wish.  Take a pair of scissors and cut strings of various different lengths — as short as 12 inches, and as long as 30 or more inches.

When you are finished cutting the string, bunch all the pieces up into one big clump of string.

To play, ask the first volunteer to choose any piece of string.  Have the person pull on it and separate it from the other pieces of string.  Ask them to introduce themselves as they slowly wind the piece of string around their index finger.   The funny part of this icebreaker game is that some of the strings are extremely long, so sometimes a person must keep talking for a very long time!  This is a good way to get everyone to start talking.  People might find out something interesting or new about each other!  Feel free to adapt this game according to your needs.  Have fun.

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Instructions for Icebreaker Questions

A great way to help people open up is to ask them fun questions that allow them to express their personality or interesting things about them.  Here is a list of twenty safe, useful icebreaker questions to help break the ice:

1. If you could have an endless supply of any food, what would you get?
2. If you were an animal, what would you be and why?
3. What is one goal you’d like to accomplish during your lifetime?
4. When you were little, who was your favorite super hero and why?
5. Who is your hero? (a parent, a celebrity, an influential person in one’s life)
6. What’s your favorite thing to do in the summer?
7. If they made a movie of your life, what would it be about and which actor would you want to play you?
8. If you were an ice cream flavor, which one would you be and why?
9. What’s your favorite cartoon character, and why?
10.  If you could visit any place in the world, where would you choose to go and why
11. What’s the ideal dream job for you?
12. Are you a morning or night person?
13. What are your favorite hobbies?
14. What are your pet peeves or interesting things about you that you dislike?
15. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten?
16. Name one of your favorite things about someone in your family.
17. Tell us about a unique or quirky habit of yours.
18. If you had to describe yourself using three words, it would be…
19. If someone made a movie of your life would it be a drama, a comedy, a romantic-comedy, action film, or science fiction?
20. If I could be anybody besides myself, I would be…

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Candy Introductions can work with any group size.  The icebreaker works best when the group size is limited to 12, so if you have more than 12, divide the larger group and run the icebreaker within the smaller sized groups.  This icebreaker works best indoors, and is well suited for classrooms or meeting rooms.  Materials required are: candy with about five different variations (color or candy type), and an optional chalkboard/whiteboard.

Setup for Candy Introductions

Purchase several variety packs of candy, enough for each person to be able to have at least five pieces.  They can be any candy type, but not too many choices (limit it to around five or six different varieties).  Alternatively, you can buy gummy bears, life savers, gum drops, skittles, m&ms, or any other candy that already has a variety of colors.

Instructions for How to Play 

Pass around the candy and tell each participant to choose anywhere from 1 to 5 pieces of anything that they want.  Instruct them not to eat it yet, though.  After they have chosen their candy, you will tell them what each candy type/color represents.

If there is a whiteboard or chalkboard present, write on the board the following:

• Red – Favorite hobbies
• Green – Favorite place on earth
• Blue – Favorite memory
• Yellow -Dream job
• Orange – Wildcard (tell us anything about yourself!)

If you don’t have the above colors, change the above to match the candy types that you have.  Each person takes turns introducing himself or herself, beginning with their name and then saying one fact for each candy type that they have.  This easy introduction game should go relatively quickly (assuming they weren’t greedy and that they didn’t take too many pieces of candy!)

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This get-to-know-you activity is best done indoors.  Any number of people can participate.  The recommended age is 7 and up.  Materials required are: several sheets of paper, pens, and colored pencils/crayons/markers.

Instructions for Fabulous Flags Activity

Pass out a sheet of paper, pens, and colored pencils, crayons, and/or markers to each person.  Explain the activity: “We’re now going to draw flags that represent or symbolize us.  Please design your own flag of you – include some symbols or objects that symbolize who you are or what you find enjoyable or important.”  You can show your own sample flag if you like.  For example, you could draw:

• a guitar (representing your passion for music)
• a tennis racket (someone who enjoys sports)
• a country like India (representing your affiliation with a country)
• a cross and a heart (representing Jesus and His love for the world)

Give everyone a set amount of time to draw (e.g. 15-20 minutes or so) and then reconvene.  Ask for volunteers to share their flags and explain the meaning of what they drew.  If it is a large group, you can divide everyone into smaller groups and ask them to share their flags with each other, or you can just ask a small number of volunteers to share.

Variations

After everyone has finished sharing the individual flags, as a big group you can ask everyone to brainstorm ideas on what to draw for a large class-wide flag.  Proceed to delegate individuals to draw certain parts of the class-wide flag.  Alternatively, you can collect the individual flags and paste them onto a board to create a “quilt” of individual flags, representing unity.

(credits: thanks Eunice!)

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This game can be classified as a get-to-know-you style icebreaker.  The recommended group size is medium, large, or extra large groups.  Players will be divided into multiple teams of at least five people.  This game can be played both indoors or outdoors.  There are no special materials required to play.  It works great with all ages.

Setup for the Superlative Game

The facilitator of the Superlative game needs to prepare a list of categories.  These categories can be surface-level categories such as height (in ascending order), birthday month (in ascending order, from January to December), shoe size, number of siblings (least to most), etc. or you can also make deeper categories, depending on your goals.

Playing the Superlative Game

Split the group into at least three teams.  The ideal team size is at least five players per team, but preferably no more than nine.  Explain the rules and consider using one of the variations below (such as the no talking rule). 

Read the first category aloud, such as “Line up by increasing order of height.  Go!”  Each team scrambles to get in the proper order.  When a team thinks they are done, they must all sit down and raise their hands.  At this point, the facilitator checks the team and verifies that they are in the proper order.  If they made a mistake, they get awarded zero points that round and the facilitator checks the next group that sat down.  The first team to correctly get in order and sits down gets awarded a point. 

The facilitator then reads off the next category, and this process repeats until the game is over (no more categories).

Variations

There are many variations to this game that are worth considering.  These include:

1. No talking allowed.  All players must rely on body language and hand gestures to get in the proper order.

2. Head and feet only.  You can only use your head and feet to signal where to go.  No talking or use of arms/hands to communicate.

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This get-to-know-you game is played with two teams of about six to eight people each. The recommended location for this game is indoors. Materials required are: several sheets of paper and pens. Personal Trivia Baseball is playable by ages 10 and up, including college students and adults in corporate settings.

Setup for Personal Trivia Baseball

This game should be played with two teams. Divide the players into two teams of about six to eight people — other team sizes are possible but less ideal, as the game may be too short or too long. You can increase or decrease the number of sheets accordingly, depending on how long you want the game to last.

To prepare for the game, pass out four sheets and a pen to each player. Instruct each person to write “S” on the first sheet, “D” on the second, “T” on the third, and “HR” on , the fourth. These letters stand for single, double, triple, and home run, respectively. On each of these sheets, each person writes an interesting fact about themselves. Do not write any names on the sheets, because the goal of the game is to guess whose fact is written on each sheet. The fact written on the single (“S”) sheet should be the easiest to guess; the double (“D”) sheet should be a little harder to figure out; the triple (“T”) even harder; and the home run (“HR”) should be the hardest.

Once everyone is finished writing their clues, collect them and sort them into four piles per team: singles, doubles, triples, home run. Shuffle all the papers and arrange the piles into four different corners of the room, in the shape of a baseball diamond (see image below).

Playing Personal Trivia Baseball

The way Personal Trivia Baseball is played is similar to normal baseball rules. Each team has three “outs” per inning and tries to score as many runs as they can. On a turn, a player chooses to go for a single (easiest), double, triple, or home run (most difficult). He or she picks a sheet from the other team’s piles, reads it, and then guesses which of the people on the other team wrote the fact. Once he or she makes a guess, the guessed person on the other team simply says “yes” or “no”. If the guess is correct, the person successfully gets on base with a single, double, triple, or home run and moves to that part of the room. If the guess is incorrect, then the team adds another “out”. Move on to the next batter and repeat until there are three outs. Once there are three outs, change to the other team and repeat. Keep track of the number of runs each team has scored.

Keep playing until all the clues are revealed, or for a shorter game, set a time limit or a set number of innings. The winner is the team with the higher score at the end.

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This get-to-know-you game can be played indoors or outdoors.  The recommended number of people for this game is ten to fifteen, but all group sizes can play by dividing into appropriate sized groups.  Recommended age is 8 and up.  No special materials are required.

Instructions for Never Have I Ever

Instruct everyone to sit in a circle.  If you have an extremely large group, tell people to form smaller circles of about ten to fifteen people.  To start each round, each player holds out all ten fingers and places them on the floor.  Go around the circle and one at a time, each person announces something that they have never done, beginning the sentence with the phrase “Never have I ever…”  For example, a person could say, “Never have I ever been to Europe.”  For each statement that is said, all the other players drop a finger if they have done that statement.  So, if three other people have been to Europe before, those three people must put down a finger, leaving them with nine fingers.  The goal is to stay in the game the longest (to be the last person with fingers remaining).  To win, it’s a good strategy to say statements that most people have done, but you haven’t. 

Playing this game, along with the benefit of getting to know each others’ experiences better, can be very humorous (e.g. saying silly statements such as, “Never have I ever skipped a class in school” or “Never have I ever soiled my pants.”)  Have fun!

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This game is a get-to-know-you style icebreaker in which players try to guess which person corresponds to each item written on notecards.  The recommended group size is a medium sized group of about eight to sixteen people, although the game can be adapted to accommodate other sized groups.  Playing this icebreaker indoors is most ideal.  Materials required are: several notecards and pens. Who Done It? is playable by all ages, including college students and adults in corporate settings.

Setup and Gameplay for Who Done It (Whodunit?)

This game can be played individually or with two teams.  For extremely large groups, choose ten volunteers and split them into two teams of five.  To set up the game, pass out an index card and a pen for each participant.  Ask each person to write down something interesting they have done.  Examples include the following:

• I went skydiving once.
• I got arrested before.
• I once drank a gallon of milk.
• I lived in seven different states.
• I ate bugs before.

Try to instruct people to write a fact that most people don’t already know – the sillier (or more unbelievable) the better.  Collect all the cards (separate them into two piles if two teams are playing).  Shuffle the cards and then pass them back out.  Each person (or team) takes turns reading aloud their card and then the reader must guess whose fact he or she read. After he or she guesses, the guessed person simply says “yes” or “no”.  If the person guesses correctly, the guessed person can briefly explain what they wrote (if desired).  The guessing continues until all cards are exhausted.  Everyone reveals who wrote which card at the end.

The Who Done It? game is a good, simple get-to-know-you game that is especially good for groups with new people, or for whenever you wish to help people get to know each other better to break the ice.  Sometimes humorous facts can be revealed, leading people to exclaim, “You did WHAT?”

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