A list of amazing TEAM TIME ideas for your world race experience!
Even if you aren’t going on the world race, but want some cool game ideas, keep on reading!
What is Team Time?
For my squad, every ministry day we were required to have team time, which consists of someone leading the group in ANY kind of activity they want. Sometimes, team time can be serious. Other times, it can be very VERY fun. Some of my favorite memories of the race were during team time. I have decided to give a list of activities from my race for all of you future racers. I hope this list gives you some good ideas and wonderful memories like they did for me.
Hand Slap
Great for breaking the ice, team bonding, and lots of laughing.
How to play: Everyone lays down on their bellies in a circle facing each-other. Put your arms flat on the ground over lapping with the person next to you. Choose a direction, and start slapping your hands one after another going in that direction. One slap keeps it going the same direction, two slaps causes the direction to change the other way. If you mess up, that hand leaves the circle. If you mess up twice, you’re out of the circle. When you get down to 2 people left you can do rock paper scissors, or any other creative 2 person game to find the winner.
Telephone Pictionary
Like the game Telephone, but with pictures!
Each person needs small pieces of paper, the number of pieces is determined by the number of people playing. (If you have 7 people, each person gets 7 small pieces of paper). It helps to number each piece small in the corner.
How to play: Everyone comes up with their own written description of something. This can be absolutely anything. Ex: “Sumo wrestlers racing on unicycles” or “monkey with glasses paragliding”… once everyone has written their description you each pass THE WHOLE STACK of paper in your hand to the person on your right. The next person will read the description (to themselves), take that piece of paper, move it to the back of the stack, and on the new piece you will attempt to draw what you read on the next piece. It should be labeled #2. The game continues until it has made a full circle, except each time you’ll alternate drawing or writing. At the end, each person shares how their description evolved into something…else.
Boulder Dash
*Need internet or to plan ahead
From my understanding, you can go online and find a list of words if you search for “Boulder Dash word list”
You’ll need to choose a large number of words from the list and write them down on a sheet of paper. If you don’t have internet for the actual game, on a separate piece you’ll need to write the definitions.
How to play: Whoever wants to go first gets to choose a word from the list (these words are very obscure and 99.9% of the time no one knows the definition). The word chooser reads the word out loud, and each person writes down a made-up definition on a piece of paper WITH your name on it and they all get passed to the word chooser. While that’s happening, the word chooser looks up the real definition of the word and also writes that down on a piece of paper. All of these definitions get put together and read aloud by the word chooser. Read them twice through, and then everyone votes on which definition they think is the true definition.
Scoring: If no one guesses the real definition, the word chooser gets 3 points. If your definition was not the real definition but it gets voted for, you get 1 point per vote.
Dolphin Training
Fun fact: Apparently the name comes from how they actually train dolphins with the ‘ding’ sound.
WARNING: one time while playing this game my teammate laughed so hard that she peed…literally! So, be warned.
How to play: One person leaves the room or goes far enough away that they can’t hear the group. The group chooses a task for that person to accomplish. We usually tried to start easy, and let the tasks get harder as we progressed. Invite the person back in the room. They can ask yes or no questions only. If the answer is yes, everyone says “Ding” if the answer is no, everyone stays silent. You just keep going until they figure it out!
Examples: Sit on someones lap and tell them what you want for Christmas. Put on specific clothing and do the Macarena. Take every pillow from the room, make a nest, and sit in it pretending you’re a bird. Lift up your stuffed animal and sing the lion king song.
**One time we made a pattern, we said ‘ding’ every third question. She got it eventually…
3 Truths
Great get-to-know-you game!
How to play: Each person writes down 3 truths about yourself on a piece of paper (try to use different handwriting/write with your left hand) and they all get tossed into a hat/bowl/whatever you have. Choose things that your teammates don’t know about you. Each person take a turn drawing a truth and tries to guess whose it is. If you get it right, you keep the paper. Keep going until all of them have been guessed and see who has the most at the end. If you draw your own, put it back UNLESS its the last one left.
Other:
Draw each other: This one is simple and you probably did it in grade school. Pick a partner and draw your teammate without looking down and without lifting your pencil.
Listening prayer: There are many awesome ways to do this with your team. One way is everyone gets a random number and has to pray for a word or picture. That number is linked to a person, so at the end you reveal which number went with which person and share whatever you got for them.
Catch Phrase: Pretty much everyone knows what this game is, if not, you can get it as an app on your phone. My teammate made a custom list and used world-race lingo from our specific race, and it was SO fun.
Art: Draw yourself as a coffee mug. My teammate did this with us recently and it was really fun and relaxing.
Spicy Uno: You’ll need a deck of regular uno cards, but to spice things up you can look up “Spicy Uno” online and play with some fun rules.
I recommend bringing a deck of cards!!! There are many opportunities for card games.
BONUS!!! GAME FOR THE WHOLE SQUAD
True Storyteller
My squad played this game during our all squad month, and it was SO much fun. However it only works if you have a large number of people.
You need to have 1-2 people leading the game. Everyone will need paper and pen/pencil.
How to play: Everyone has to write down a TRUE short statement about themselves, preferably something humorous or strange.
Here are some good examples are: “My first kiss smelled like ham” or “I threw up during a professional massage” etc…
Remember it has to be true about you. Everyone needs to put their name on the paper and then turn it into the ‘game leaders’
The game leaders will choose 3 people based on their paper and call them up to the front of the group, but they will only pick ONE story out of the three. If you are a game leader, you can be as strategic or as random as you want for this part. Personally, I try to be strategic and choose the best stories and the best fit people; you’ll see why.
So, you’ll choose one story and read it aloud to the group. The three people will each take a turn giving their reason/backstory about the story read and why it’s true for them. But, its only true for one of them. So, you are basically trying to convince the crowd that its your story.
After each person gives their bit, the group votes on who they think is the true storyteller. After the vote, the person who’s story it actually is will stand up. You can keep going for as long as you want.
Thanks for reading, and I hope this helps spark some awesome ideas for your future team times!
