Warm-Up: WHOOSH!
Primary Focus: Focus, Energy
Intended Age: Any!
Students gather in a circle. The facilitator indicates how to send the “WHOOSH!” around
the circle – turn to the person next to you, then with a physical indicator and saying the word
loudly, send the “WHOOSH!” . That person continues to the next person in the circle. The
whoosh moves quickly and with high energy.
Once students have mastered this, the facilitator adds the word “FLIP FLOP!” Upon
receiving the whoosh, a student may throw their arms in the air and yell “FLIP FLOP!” to
reverse the direction of the whoosh – like an Uno reverse card. The person prior continues
sending the whoosh, the other way now.
The next addition is “Kerbounce!” and “Kercatch!” While using “FLIP FLOP”, students
may notice that the whoosh gets stuck in one section of the circle. When this happens, students
are encouraged to take the whoosh when they have it, make eye contact with someone across the
circle from them, and say “Kerbounce!” while miming the bounce of a basketball across the
circle. The receiver must say “Kercatch!” before resuming with the whoosh.
The last addition to this game is “Kerfluffle!” At any point, any person in the circle may
yell “KERFLUFFLE!”. When this happens, everybody must run to find a new spot in the circle.
Then, the person who yelled “Kerfluffle” may continue with the whoosh.
Throughout the building of the activity, the facilitator should constantly be reminding
students of the nonsense words at play – whoosh, flip flop, kerbounce, kercatch, and kerfluffle.
Then, when students are displaying a level of mastery, the facilitator adds elimination.
Students are eliminated when:
The whoosh is sent with low energy.
The whoosh is sent with a delay.
The whoosh is sent with the wrong nonsense word.
The facilitator determines when someone is eliminated. That student will be asked to sit
right where they are. As the eliminations continue, this not only keeps eliminated students in the
energy circle with the rest of the ensemble, but creates an extra challenge for those remaining to
find where the whoosh goes to next.
The game continues until the facilitator determines that enough have been eliminated, or
the students remaining seem to be in a “stale mate”.