Raccoon Circles help me scaffold a number of challenge course activities that will eventually involve higher risk. One such activity is All Aboard - the group stands atop a small box or platform without touching the ground. So, to prepared my groups for the "snuggle" challenge of All Aboard I introduce them to Everybody In (a slight change to the All Aboard Raccoon Circle challenge described in The Revised Book of Raccoon Circles).
I love working with Raccoon Circles - a trade name used by Tom Smith (coined by Karl Rohnke) for a 15-foot piece of tubular webbing. (Get your free "Raccoon Circles" downloadable activity guide from Jim Cain. Also, check out the book by Tom Smith and Jim Cain called The Revised Book of Raccoon Circles: A Facilitators Guide to Building Unity, Community, Connection and Teamwork Through Active Learning - find the book at Training Wheels.)
Raccoon Circles help me scaffold a number of challenge course activities that will eventually involve higher risk. One such activity is All Aboard - the group stands atop a small box or platform without touching the ground. So, to prepared my groups for the "snuggle" challenge of All Aboard I introduce them to Everybody In (a slight change to the All Aboard Raccoon Circle challenge described in The Revised Book of Raccoon Circles). SET UP: You'll need one 15-foot Raccoon circle for a group of 12 to 15 players and a tape measure. I set up the Raccoon Circle by tying one end of the webbing (using and overhand knot) near the other end of the webbing - essentially tying a slip knot so the knot can slide up the webbing. Using a 15-foot length of webbing and sliding the knot almost all the way to the free end I set down the webbing into a circle on the ground. ACTION: Here's how I play. With my webbing circle on the ground and my group of 12 to 15 players ready to go, I ask them all to step into the webbing circle so that everyone has at least one foot touching the ground inside the circle and no other body part touching the ground outside of the circle (in this first round everyone should have room to place both feet on the ground - unless you are working with folks with larger frames). When everyone has made it inside I ask for a single round of "Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream," the I ask everyone to carefully step out of the circle. Once everyone is out safely I grab the little tail of the webbing (sticking out from the knot) and I slide the knot up a few inches. Before anyone goes into the circle I measure the webbing tail to "quantify" the challenge. "Okay, your circle is now three inches smaller. Do you think you can all fit back inside the circle under the same rules presented at the beginning of the activity?" Most groups will be ready to take on this challenge. I continue this process until the group reaches the smallest possible circle of space for their group. SAFETY: As the circle gets smaller the bodies get closer together and all sorts of grabbing and hanging on insures. Be sure you stick to the rule that all players must have one foot on the ground inside the circle at all times. Also, make them aware that personal (and overall group) safety is more important than a circle that is just too small. I do my best to spot the activity as well, looking for a place around the mass of people that has the most potential for tippage. I like this version of measuring the tail because you can see the progress and the ultimate result of the group's accomplishment. It's also possible to return to the activity after some work together to see if the group can shave a few inches off of their previous attempt. Let me know how you use this variation of All Aboard. Leave a comment below. All the best, Chris Cavert
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As many of you know, my friend Sam Sikes and I wrote a couple noodle activity books. So, I'm always keeping an eye out for, and a few brain cells open to, new noodlings. Recently I had the opportunity to work with a wonderful elementary physical education team - Jeremy, Ryan & Brad (sorry Brad, I didn't have a picture of you - you were too fast!!), and they helped me try out a new idea. (There is an activity out there, I think it's in one of Karls Rohnke's books, where you see how many tennis balls you can get one person to hold up off the ground - this one's sort of like that.) I had with me my 4-inch noodle chips and a new batch of poppers. (These are small noodle chips cut in half - the blue and green props in the picture. I first read about poppers in the book Achieving Fitness from Project Adventure). Here's the overall idea so far: The game is played in three rounds of 30, 60 & 90 seconds respectively. A larger group is divided into smaller groups of three (or four if needed) - each person will take a turn being the perch. Set out all the perchables in center of the playing area (for us it was the noodle chips and poppers - you could use all sorts of objects as long as they are stackable and you have lots of them). The further you position the small teams away from the perchables the more running takes place. (If you are after a bit of fitness with your adventures, establish a greater distance to get in the cardio. There will also be a little muscular fitness work for the perch - holding up an arm.) Okay, let's play. Give all the groups an initial minute to consider their plan of action - without going out to the perchable pile of items. After this interim, have the percher ready, facing the perchables pile, and the perchers teammates behind him or her. On "GO" (the time starts) the percher holds up one arm and his or her teammates go out to each get a perchable - only one item can be picked up by each player per run. Perchable items are brought back and place on the perch (arm). Once placed the runners can go get another item to bring back. The first round goes for 30 seconds in this manner. If anything (or everything) falls from the perch, players can pick up the items and put them back on their perch - the time is still running. At the end of 30 seconds whatever is on the perch is the team's score for that round (e.g., 20 items, 20 points). Before the 60 second and 90 second rounds provide some planning time for the teams - maybe 60 seconds is enough, maybe a bit more is better. This will depend on the group's objectives. When ready, Switch perches and go for the next round. Thought/Variations:
There are a number of things I can do with this activity. It's not about competing with others (even though this could happen), it's about each group's process. Maybe there could be some collaboration? Then there's the process of planning and strategy that can be developed. Appropriate goal setting can be discussed and experienced. And, since working with my inspirational physical educator crew there is some COMMON CORE I can weave in. If I provided at least three different types of objects, each object could have a point value. After each round the group would have to do some math in order to determine their score. Consider this: You can get in some fitness, team building, and common core enhancement out of one activity. Help me develop this further. Send me your thoughts/experiences through the comments below. All the best, Chris Cavert Here's a fun variation I really like of a good-ol Rohnke activity (Warp Speed) - it is really proving to be a low-prop keeper!
ACTIVITY OBJECTIVE: The group is challenged to verbally move through a pattern of each participant’s name as quickly as possible. FACILITATED OBJECTIVE: Explore behaviors related to communication, cooperation, planning and implementation, participation/active engagement, problem solving, and goal setting. Explore concepts of practice/rehearsal, success/failure, and task pressure. NEEDS & NUMBERS: You’ll need a spot marker for each player (my favorite spot is a five foot piece of parachute cord tied at the ends to make a circle) and one stopwatch. Plays well with 8 to 16 people. Multiple groups can play at the same time – it’s good to have a stopwatch for each group. TIME: 10 to 15 minutes (for a few rounds) PROCEDURE: Have your group form a comfortable circle – double elbow is fine. Have each player stand on (or in) a spot. As in the traditional Warp Speed (often preceded by the activity Group Juggle), the group will first need to set up a passing order. However, in this variation instead of passing an object (done in Warp Speed), the players will be passing names. Before this happens I like to add, “When setting up the name-passing order (NPO), please do not pass your name to a person standing next to you.” Each player is asked to pass his or her own name once and receive another players name once in the order. For example, Berry starts by saying, “Barry passes to Mary.” Mary then says, “Mary passes to Gretchen.” Gretchen says, “Gretchen passes to George.” This continues until everyone has passed his or her name. The last player to receive a pass (name) in the order passes his name to Barry, “Chris passes to Barry.” Once the NPO is established, ask the group to practice it two or three times to make sure they have it down. At this practice stage I let the players simple say the name of the person he or she is passing to - Barry only needs to say, "Mary" (not "Barry passes to Mary.") When the NPO is “locked in” the challenge can be presented. With the memorized and practiced order in mind, each person is going to be moving to the spot of the other person they called out in the pattern. So, Barry will be moving to Mary’s spot (Note: based on what you find out in the directions below, Barry will end up being the last person to move – going to Mary’s spot), Mary to Gretchen’s (Mary will be the first person to move), Gretchen to George’s and so on until Chris occupies the spot eventually left open by Barry. This challenge will be timed from the moment Mary leaves her spot to the time when Chris and Barry reach there spots (as well as everyone else being in their appropriate spot). When the group understands the overall idea of the activity, I present the two main rules for clarification:
SAFETY & FACILITATION: If you present this activity early on in your program (I use it for learning names and also as a way to introduce the types of challenges I will be presenting), your group might not get the “shift” in thinking just yet. Those familiar with Warp Speed know that the directions did not say they had to move one at a time or that they had to start in the spot where they created their passing order. The group, for this specific challenge, is only asked to follow the two clarification rules. So, if you do present this one early, you might consider coming back to it after your group has discovered some “shifting” in other activities to see if they can achieve a super-fast time. Or, if you have a group that can really be challenged at the get-go, ask them (give them the goal) to achieve a time under five seconds. This imposed goal might “nudge” them into the shift(s) to be able to solve the problem. I haven’t run into many safety issues during this one, however, after the “shift” there might be some “running into” problems. As always, stress that everyone’s safety is more important than a fast time. OBSERVATIONS/QUESTIONS:
VARIATIONS:
Let me know how this one goes for you. Leave your feedback in the comments area below. Have fun out there! Chris Cavert My good friend Brian designed a wonderful pre-breif and debriefing tool some years back called the Stop-N-Go. This handy portable processing tools is available at the Training Wheels website. A Green, Yellow, and Red marble travel safely in a perforated PVC key chain style tube always at the ready to use with groups. I have one and use it all the time. Which brings me to a slight variation on Brian's idea. The other day I was walking around one of my favorite activity idea spaces - Lowe's. I've always been attracted to the paint sample cards but have never been inspired to use them due to their size (a bit too small). However, now available are 4 inch by 6 inch paint sample cards for allen + roth's valsper paints. I immediately thought of how to use them. With Brian's idea of the traffic light colors I can now write down the goals participants have for each color when I'm in an environment to do so. "What do we want to GO for during the program?" I write this on the green card. "What do we want to be CAUTIOUS of?" on the yellow card. And, "What do we want to make sure we STOP doing while we are together? on the red card. I'm sure you see the idea here and the many instances you could interject this line of thinking throughout your programs. When I'm using the colored marbles I start out asking for one thing related to each color - making it easy to remember and evaluate. Then, as the program progresses we can check in with the marbles from time-to-time to see how we are doing. If it's appropriate we add a consideration to each color. We could even determine that what was decided earlier is no longer relevant so we replace the initial consideration with another one that seems more relevant to what's going on. I see this process happening with the colorful cards as well. Starting with one item and then adding to (writing on) the cards as we progress. We can even cross out things that no longer apply. I like the visual aspect of the cards and seeing the considerations in print. There is still a limit to the amount that will fit on a card, but often times less is more. Also, just getting my hands on these colorful cards made me realize I could also pick up some green, yellow, and red card stock paper and cut out my own cards. Then there is a front and back side to write on. And, I cold give these cards away to the group at the end of their program to remind them of what they worked on. (I find it interesting what opens a door to an obvious resource.) What else can we use paint sample cards for? Share your ideas in the comment area below. All the best, Chris Cavert I attended the first annual Xperiential Symposium this month here in Chicago. Good people and good learning!! My friend and fellow experiential educator Barney Straus share a nice "repurpose" of a puzzle game for kids called Rhyming Words. He says he picked this up at Target. The game includes 50 sturdy puzzle pieces - enough for up to 25 puzzle pairs (but you knew that!). It sells for about $15 on Amazon. Activity 1: The first activity he introduced involved each participant in the group finding his or her rhyming pair. Barney first gathered from the box the number of puzzle pieces we needed so each of us, with one piece, would have a rhyming match. He shuffled up the pieces and then we each picked one from the pile (if you have an odd number of players, then you, the facilitator, get to play). On "GO" we turned our card over and then mingled around until we found our match. After pairing up we introduced ourselves and shared some facts about each other - a nice way to connect with someone else in a safe way. And a great way to pair up participants randomly. Activity 2: Barney then asked all the pairs to come up with a sentence that included the two words they have and a strategy as to how each pair would present their sentence to the group. There was a nice variety of presentation styles. This was a nice easy challenge for two people and a low-level risk of presenting "ourselves" in front of a group. Activity 3: Being the experiential educators that we are, we proceeded to check out all the cards and found that we could create a fair number of "word lines" - think Word Circle Puzzles without connecting the words into a circle. House Cat & Fire Truck are two starts I remember.... Activity 4: We also noticed that the puzzle images could be used as a frontloading or processing tool. "Choose an image that best represents......" Like a TIRE, we want to make sure we keep rolling and recognize when we're stuck. We should remember to keep the FIRE burning for what we think is important. Lets be sure to acknowledge the things that can BUG us and figure out strategies to work through these things. We will likely have to wear different HATS during our time together - some of these hats are.... I'm sure there will be more fun pulled out of this versatile game. If you try it out pass along any new ideas through the comments below. All the best, Chris Cavert I finally picked up the Pictionary Card Game from Barnes & Nobel. When I first saw it a while ago I thought these cards would make a nice processing tool. When I opened up the carton I found the game comes with two identical sets of 44 cards - a red and blue set - all for $6.95 (share a set with a friend or split your group in half so there is more talk time between participants). I was also surprised to find out the cards (printed on sturdy card stock) measure 2 inches by 2.5 inches. I actually like the idea of a tiny-tool to carry with me everywhere. And, another nice little feature is that the pictures on each card are printed on both sides so you never have to spend valuable time turning all the cards face up!! (You know what I'm talking about!!) The cards have a variety of recognizable images (a plane, a male stick figure, a female stick figure, a house, a star, a clock, and more) and some interpretable images (three wavy lines - see carton picture, three straight lines, and some different geometric shapes). I see lots of connections through the images for meaningful processing conversations. These little cards can also be used for most of the activities found in the Chiji Guidebook. For example, deal everyone a pictionary card and when you say go participants are challenged to line up in order, as quickly as possible, based on the "realistic" size of the object depicted on the card. Or, line up alphabetically, as quickly as possible, by the name of the object on the card. There will be some interesting interpretations to talk about in both versions of these line ups. And of course, you can always play the pictionary game during down time, lunch breaks, and evening recreation gatherings. If you try this tiny-tool, let us know how it goes. Share through the comments below. All the best, Chris Cavert I was just searching around for something (team building dice games - still searching), when I came across a site that seems to have a variety of activities within it. I'll be going back to look around more, but I wanted to share it: Businessballs.com (who comes up with these names?!!) (Be sure to check the "Related Materials" links in the left hand column for additional journeys.) While browsing around for inspiration I found this incredible list of acronyms (and Backronyms - more on this term below). I remember from one of my first trainings (way back in the day) our group participated in a "Master Mind Relay" (made popular by Project Adventure). A relay consists of all sorts of activity choices (e.g., puzzles, challenges, adventures) groups work together to solve in a certain amount of time. Solving acronyms was one of the challenges. (If you are a Karl Rohnke fan and have some of his older publications, you know he was - and still is - a fan of acronyms. Did you know, according to Karl, the term Challenge by Choice was inspired by the acronym CBC - complete blood count) Something else I learned about at the acronym site (I love learning surprises) was the term "Backronym." I'm guessing it's been around for a while, I just haven't come across it - but I do know the idea. Basically, you create an acronym out of a word that is not an acronym. For instance, one I saw at the site: YAHOO - You Always Have Other Options (I'm sure Yahoo does not claim this slogan!) Let me know if you find anything really good!! I'll do the same. All the best, Chris Cavert THE MISSING LINK Here's another installment of Word Circle Puzzles you can use with your class or groups. (If you are new to Word Circle Puzzles see the January 2013 post for an intro.) Now, this short set of puzzles is a little different. Each puzzle has a missing word - one that will complete the circle of words. Off you go......
(If you need a little help see the hints I've included at the bottom of this post. If you need a bit more assistance send me a request.) 1. Cold, Out, Road, Call, Show, Back, Time, Blast, Worn (10 Words - what's missing?) 2. Class, Table, Room, Tennis, Light, Can, Club, Work, House, Age, Soda (12 Words) 3. Price, Over, Line, Cut, Head, Feet, Take, Story, First, Cold, In, Drive, List, Short (15 Words) I'm sure these will provide some challenge.....more on the way....... All the best out there!! Chris Cavert HINTS: Okay - if you need a little hint here you go...connect with me if you need to..... 1. Rocket Ship 2. Water Vessel 3. USPS Mailing Option For those of you adventure educators who get to teach health-related fitness using adventure activities (like those found in the great PA resource Achieving Fitness), head over to the FUNdoing Resources page for the latest addition. I created the Health & Fitness Findings Bingo activity for a class I'm currently teaching and I thought some of you might be able to use it. The bingo sheet is a collection of health-related fitness items. Participants circulate around the room collecting signatures from people who have a relationship with the item. Some of the items include: I can balance on one foot for over a minute; I can do at least 10 push-ups in a row; I eat at least one piece of fruit a day. If I can find someone who eats fruit every day, I have that person sign the square. If I can get five different signatures in a row I can call out "BINGO!" And then, I get to keep on playing for more bingos. Health & Fitness Findings Bingo is a variation of the Human Bingo activity found in (another great resource from Project Adventure) Adventures in Peacemaking: A Conflict Resolution Activity Guide. Find the PDF instructions and Bingo Sheet over in the FUNdoing Resources section. Let me know how is goes for you share your experience with a comment. All the best, Chris Cavert I just finished a set of ready-to-print ice breaker question cards for an upcoming class. The PDF file is over on the Resources page here at FUNdoing.com. Scroll down to the "Activity Tools" to find them. I excerpted the questions from a really long collection posted on the internet by Jim Hough - thanks Jim!! (Jim's Questions). His collection has over 200 questions. Activity Suggestion: Here's how I'll be using the cards (after I print, laminate, and cut them out). Each participant in the activity will receive one card. When ready to share, a person raises his or her hand looking for someone else doing the same thing. These two (or it could be more) players get together to share their questions and answers. After each question has been answered players exchange cards. With a new question each person is ready to find someone else to talk with if they choose to do so - indicated by raising a hand. What are some of your favorite questions to ask? Share in the comments. All the best, Chris Cavert |
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Blog AuthorDr. Chris Cavert is an internationally known author, speaker, and trainer in the area of adventure-based activity programming and its relation to community and pro-social behavior development. Blog PurposeThis blog is a space for hands-on programable fun - energetic activities and ideas that can be used as a means to bring people together; activities and ideas we as educators can add to our social development curriculums. Categories
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