TEAM TIME IDEAS:
In addition to my last blog, sharing about planning and enjoying a Team Time of having a Tea Party together with my team, I’ve written a compilation of many, many TEAM TIME ideas, that I hope will help you bring your team into some sweet times together!!
What is team time?
Team Time is an important part of World Race culture and is a part of our daily routine. This is a time which consists of someone leading the group in ANY kind of activity, just inviting our teammates into an activity with something we love! It’s a sweet time to learn more about what that person enjoys and do it all together. Sometimes, Team Time is serious and sincere; sometimes, it is silly and fun! All of the time, it’s meant to bring the team closer together! I hope that this helps you in planning your own Team Time, or if you’re not on the Race, you can use these for games with your friends, youth group, or activities to do with your family or friends!
OKAY… now for the list:
My team’s FAVORITES:
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Playing Jungle Speed (A team FAVORITE… My team is very competitive!! This game has been almost a daily enjoyment, even played outside of team time, and with other youth groups and friends in these different countries. Played with specific cards and a stick, this game might not be something you always have. But it’s fun to have a game that we know our team will always enjoy. So basically, teaching your team your favorite card game, or a game you have, like Exploding Kittens, Uno, Phase Ten, etc., is always a fun time!
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Telling stories of your greatest adventures (A fun get-to-know-you better time! Each person shares a story from their life of a great adventure they had. For more fun, give them only 5 minutes to share and show photos, if you have them!)
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Drawing a picture then a teammate praying and writing about it (This is a sweet, intentional activity you can have with your team. We did this one night. We each drew a simple picture, mine was of a window sill showing a tree swing outside, and then each teammate anonymously picked someone else’s picture and prayed about a scripture, song, prophetic word, notes, etc. to add to the picture and then we handed them the picture back to take it to the Lord.)
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Watching an episode of your fav show or childhood show, i.e. H20: Just Add Water (One afternoon, my teammate decided we were all going to watch an episode of her favorite childhood show, H20: Just Add Water, a show about mermaid friends in Australia. So many laughs were shared with this corny but sweet show that reminded some of us of our childhoods.)
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Enjoying ice cream or another dessert together (Here in Albania, my team has found a gelato shop with the BEST gelato with SO many different flavors to choose from, and each scoop is only 50 leke {or 50 cents USD}. We’ve enjoyed many scoops together, trying each other’s flavors. Sometimes, we also play a game, Jungle Speed, Heads Up or Catch Phrase!! We also have made a point to try new treats, so most nights after dinner, my team with share a treat that the people making dinner found to share. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s interesting… haha it’s fun to try to things, especially if it’s native to the country we’re in.)
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Face masks and Narnia (One evening, my team, even the guys, applied face masks and watched Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe movie together. A first for a few! :))
- Attending an event in the area you’re located (One evening, my team all attended a futbol (soccer) game here in Shkoder. The local team was playing a team from the capital, who were their rivals. It was a fun, exciting, and a bit scary experience to enjoy as a team, as Europeans love their soccer and it got quite intense. Fun fact: men got in with a $2 ticket, while women got in free.)
More Ideas/Games:
(More instructions/varieties can be found online.)
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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 overlapping 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.)
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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 6 people, each person gets 6 small pieces of paper.) It helps to number each piece. Everyone comes up with their own written description of something. This can be ANYTHING. Ex: “a chef making pancakes” or “Mona Lisa sitting on a bridge.” 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… it’s normally pretty funny.)
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Speaker Worship (Put some worship music on, and spend time with the Lord together. Maybe that includes praying for each other, giving prophetic notes, reading scriptures, etc.)
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Spicy Uno (You’ll need a deck of regular Uno cards, but to spice things up add these rules to the game. 1. Slap on 6 – If a player lays down a card with the number 6, everyone must slap the deck. The last player to slap, pickles up a card from the draw pile. 2. Silent 7’s – If a 7 gets played, all players must play in silence until the next 7. Any player who talks in this period draws a card. 3. Trading 0’s – If a player lays down a 0, they can force another player to swap hands with them. 4. Playing Out of Turn – Any player can lay down a card out of their turn if they have the same exact card, both the same color and the same symbol, in their hand. The gameplay continues from the player next to the player who played out of turn. 5. Stacking Pluses – If a +2 or +4 gets played, then you can stack them to avoid having to pick them up. Whoever it lands on who doesn’t have their own plus card picks up the number laid. 6. Asking for help – If a player cannot go, rather than draw from the draw pile, players can ask the circle for help. Players can offer any card from their hand even if it doesn’t help out.)
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Never Have I Ever (Everyone playing sits in a circle on their own chair, with one rotating player in the middle. The player in the middle takes turns listing potential experiences they’ve never had. If anyone has done the action or experience spoken, they, along with the person in the middle, get up out of their chair and have to find another open chair. One player will get left without a seat, and they start the next round by sharing an experience they’ve never had. And the game continues until everyone has shared or you are done.)
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Three Truths (Great get-to-know-you game! How to play: Each person writes down 3 truths about yourself on a piece of paper and they all get tossed into a hat/bowl/whatever you have. Choose things that your teammates might not know about you. Each person takes a turn drawing a piece of paper and tries to guess who it belongs to. 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 it’s the last one left. The person with the most pieces of paper wins! Variation: Two truths and a Lie : each person says out loud their two truths but also one lie. Everybody else has to guess what the lie was.)
Games for all squad times!
(more instructions can be found online.)
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Mafia (also called Body Body, Murder in the Dark, etc.) (Grab a deck of cards, take as many cards as people playing and distribute them to each person. Make sure to have at least 1 Ace card in the stack to distribute for approximately each 7 people playing. If you got a card that was an Ace, you are the mafia. If you got any other card, you are a townsperson. The game goes on to see if the townspeople can survive and find out who the mafia is before they are all attacked.)
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Egg-Chicken-Dinosaur (A game of evolving from eggs, to chickens, dinosaurs, princes/princesses, and finally kings/queens by playing Rock, Paper Scissors. Everyone starts as an Egg, squatting down on the floor with their arms wrapped around their legs to make an egg shape. Everyone shuffles around until they encounter another Egg, at which point they play a game of rock-paper-scissors The winner evolves to a Chicken, while the loser stays an Egg and has to find another Egg to play. The winner walks around, bent over and flapping their wings, until they meet another evolved Chicken.ETC through the other evolutions. The game ends when there are no more battles to be fought: there will be one Egg, one Chicken, one Dinosaur, one Prince or Princess and everyone else will be a King or a Queen.)
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Giants, Wizards, and Elves (Giants, Wizards, and Elves is an icebreaker that is similar to Rock, Paper, Scissors — except more hilarious! It’s also a versatile game — it works in groups of all sizes, including large groups of 50 or above. This icebreaker game involves teams and requires no special materials to play. It works both indoors and outdoors, so go ahead and have fun! This game involves two teams who will act as one of 3 characters: giants, wizards, and elves. When a player acts out a character, he or she does the specific hand motions and also makes the noise associated with the character.)
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Four on a Couch (This is essentially a memory game. To start, everyone sits down in a circle (including the 4 “couch” seats) alternating between Team 1 and Team 2. The object of this game is to get 4 members of your team on the designated “couch” (or just a section of 4 chairs) to win!
Last notes: Be CREATIVE! Share what you love and enjoy with your team! If you love to write poems, take a half hour to all write a poem about a specific topic and then all share together. If you love being outside, take your team to the nearest park, and kick a soccer ball around, throw a frisbee, go on a hike, or have a picnic. If you love to play games, pick your favorite and teach your team how to play!
Have fun and can’t wait to hear some of your own ideas!!
Love, Clara Grace
