PERSON TO PERSON

The Basics:

Have players stand in the middle of an open space.  Make sure there is an odd number of people in the group by having the leader participate or not participate.  One person calls out a body part, by saying, for example, "hand to hand." This means that everyone in the group has to find a person and touch their hands.  Once everyone pairs up there will be a different person who will be without a partner. This person then calls out a different body part, ("knee to knee") and each group member must find a different person to touch that body part.  The last rule is that each time, players must try to find a person that they haven't been with before.  (When they start running out of body parts have them list two parts, "head to elbow!")

In The Classroom:

• This game does everything a warm-up should do.  It forces people to interact with each other, it pushes people out of their comfort zone, it is active, fun and quick.
• Obviously, one needs to be ready to police the inappropriate body part.  But even among secondary kids this very rarely happens.  Always frame it about trust, not about being "bad." A team player does not make fellow players look bad or uncomfortable no matter how funny it might seem.
• A great way to form random pairs for an activity!!!

Attribution:

This is a game I adapted from a book called "Play It" by Wayne Rice and Mike Yaconelli.  This is one of the best game books I have ever come across.  It was designed for church group leaders.  The original book, published in 1986, had about 400 games, but more recent editions of the book broke the book down into multiple editions with more focused topics.