Breaking the ICE at Tech Camp
Here are a list of activities that we came up with. We figure we will do as much or as
little as time permits, as long as the kids are interested in the games.
1: The Name Game
Have the group stand in a large circle.
Have TA’s dispersed in group, with 2 TA’s going first.
Say “I’m <firstname>” while doing a gesture.
Next person to go lists names of all preceding people and does the gestures for
each as the name is said before telling their own name and creating their own
gesture. The entire group remains silent but does the gestures as the person who
is ‘it’ says the names.
At the end anyone (first 5? 3?) who can repeat all of the names and gestures
without any help will get a prize.
The fun is in the challenge. Tell them that we’ve only seen this done with groups
as large as 20 and that they would really be something if they could get it right for
a group this large. Tell them at the beginning that they will have the opportunity
to recite the names at the end for a prize.
2: Have You Ever…
Form a single circle with all of the TA’s and students. One TA reads out the question
and everyone who can answer ‘yes’ goes to the center of the circle and introduces
themselves/ shakes hands/ high fives. An alternative would be that we do a smaller list,
but once you get into the center of the circle, the TA who is reading tells the qualifying
group what to do. For the ones I think that is appropriate for, I have included the activity
after the question:
1. Have you ever been outside of the country? / Say which country
2. Have you ever sung karaoke? / group sings a song together
3. Have you ever been without a shower for more than 2 weeks?
4. Do you have both a brother and a sister?
5. Have you ever ridden a horse? / group gallops around inside circle
6. Have you ever eaten frogs' legs? / group plays leap frog
7. Can you speak 2 or more languages? / introduce & say something other
language
8. Have you ever flown in an airplane? / where did you go?
9. Have you ever broken a bone? / show which bone
10. Have you done volunteer work sometime in the last month?
11. Have you ever had a close relative who lived to over 100?
12. Have you ever cooked a meal by yourself for more than 20 people?
13. Have you ever been skydiving or bungee jumping?
14. Have you ever seen a polar bear?
15. Have you ever cheated on a test?
16. Have you ever slept in a movie theater? / which movie?
17. Have you ever met someone famous? / say who they met
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
Can you tell funny jokes? / tell a joke
Have you ever read more than 5 books in a month?
Have you ever seen your Mom dance? / dance like your mom
Have you ever gotten straight A’s in high school?
Have you ever seen the original Star Wars movie?
Have you ever had a black eye?
Have you ever been to a Braves game?
Do you plan to go to college? / what do you want to major in?
Have you not been to the middle of the circle yet?
3: Formaline
For this we need the kids split into at least 2 teams. They should compete to see which
team can line up correctly in the least amount of time. A challenge round could be to
have a group line up in alphabetical order without speaking. This requires that they know
each other’s names.
a) Height
b) Youngest to Oldest
c) Alphabetical
4: Stock Market:
The “Mediator” stands on a chair in the middle of the crowd of kids. Each kid is
handed a folded slip of paper with something written inside (we need several TA’s on the
floor to do this. They are to look at the paper, but show no one else what’s on it. When
the mediator says go (or rings a bell) the stock market is open and the kids’ goal is to find
the other person in the crowd with the same thing written on their slip. So in our first
run, each kid’s slip has the name of a technology company and they all mill around
repeating the name of the company until they find their partners. Once they find their
partner, they run together to the mediator and show the slips to prove they have in fact
found their match. It’s a race to see who can get paired up most quickly. Prizes should
be given to the winners of each round. TA’s should mill around in the group to watch for
cheating like showing the slip to other kids (or in the animal noises run, saying the name
of the animal instead of making the noise). We will only do as many of these runs as we
like, according to time and how much they students enjoy the game.
a) Company Names
1. Apple
2. Microsoft
3. Sun Microsystems
4. IBM
5. Intel
6. Motorola
7. Dell
8. AOL
9. ADOBE Systems
10. Compaq
11. CISCO Systems
12. Hewlett-Packard
13. Oracle
14. Xerox
15. Yahoo
16. Texas Instruments
b) Movies
1. The Godfather
2. X-Men
3. Sister Act
4. Silence of the Lambs
5. Corrina, Corrina
6. Back to the Future
7. The Wizard of Oz
8. Shrek
9. Men in Black
10. Pirates of the Caribbean
11. The Princess Bride
12. Scooby-Doo
13. Jaws
14. Twister
15. Jurassic Park
16. Spider-Man
17. Independence Day
18. Home Alone
c) Difficult Words
1. autochthonous: native, originating at the place where found
2. apodictic: demonstrated logically and irrefutably
3. zeignarik: n. Psychology, tendency to remember an uncompleted
rather than a completed task.
4. zooscopy: n. hallucination of seeing animals. zooscopic, a.
5. Zollverein: an economic/customs union, as organized by Prussia in the
1800s.
6. quincunx: an arrangement in which things are at the four corners and
center of a rectangle
7. zeitgeist: spirit, philosophy of a time
8. rainivorous: adj, eating frogs
9. schadenfreude: adj, taking pleasure in the misery of others
10. callipygian: having a shapely rear end
11. ochlophobia: fear of crowds or mobs
12. oriflamme: a banner, symbol or ideal inspiring devotion or courage
13. kvetch: [Yiddish] to complain habitually: gripe
14. lacuna: a gap
15. logogogue: a person who lays down rules about words; a language
dictator
16. keck: to heave or retch, as in an effort to vomit
17. grammaticaster: a petty grammarian; a pretentious grammatical
pedant
18. hallux: the big toe
19. haptic: relating to the sense of touch
20. hircine: characteristic of a goat, esp its odor
21. hircismus: having smelly armpits
22. hirsute: roughly hairy
d) Phrases / Movie Quotes
1. “Bond, James Bond” James Bond Movies
2. “Hasta la vista, Baby” Terminator
3. “I’ll be back” Terminator
4. “Life is like a box of chocolates” Forrest Gump
5. “No, I am your father” Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
6. “E.T. Phone Home” E.T
7. “Show me the money” Jerry Maguire
8. “Don’t let go, Jack” Titanic
9. “Houston, we have a problem” Apollo 13
10. “That was totally wicked!” The Incredibles
11. “Fish are friends, not food” Finding Nemo
12. “Adrienne!” Rocky
13. “My precious” Lord of the Rings
14. “Mr. Anderson” The Matrix
15. “I see dead people” The Sixth Sense
16. “It’s because I’m green, isn’t it?” The Grinch
17. “That’s what I call high quality H20” The Waterboy
e) Animal Noises
Here they will not be saying the name of the animal, but instead imitating the
noise the animal makes. With this one we thought it might be best to have 3
or 4 people each have the same animal. I have included 16 ideas, but we can
just choose the best 8 or 10
1. Monkey
2. Seal
3. Lion
4. Snake
5. Donkey
6. Elephant
7. Sheep
8. Hyena
9. Chick
10. Pig
11. Rooster
12. Mouse
13. Turkey
14. Yellow Jacket
15. Fish
16. Rabbit or Giraffe (silent)
f) (optional) All Dog Noises
The idea is that we’d hand out “One more animal noises round, but we’ve
made them hard and all loud animals. You’re going to have to be really loud
to hear over everyone else’s” The cards each have different breeds of Dogs or
just all say “Dog”, so everyone starts barking all at once… we’ll of course
stop them when they realize it’s a joke.