Zoom – Minimal Prep

If you are looking for no prep Zoom activities or Zoom bingo then look at my previous two posts please. This post just focuses on minimal preparation ideas that will take less than 5 minutes to prepare or just need you to pick up a tiny piece of equipment.

Dice Questions – All you need is a dice and a piece of paper or a PowerPoint slide. Note 6 questions on a theme on the paper/slide and number them 1-6. Throw the dice for each participant and ask them the question – the dice and the unpredictability suddenly makes a question and answer session good fun. Here are a few that we had fun with recently:

Higher/Lower Grab a pack of playing cards and you are sorted. It is best if participants draw a bold arrow on a piece of paper or mini whiteboard but they can just point up or down too. This is basically the higher or lower game – show a card and they decide with their arrow if the next card is higher or lower – the winner is the one who gets the furthest! Really good fun for all ages. When they are out they can switch off their video to prevent confusion but this isn’t essential

Spot the Difference Type ‘spot the difference’ into Google and you can find loads of these. If you have time then create your own by editing a photo. Show this by sharing your screen at the start as they are joining and it is a great discussion point. Use easy ones for younger members and there are some difficult ones out there for the older ones. Here are some I have created or used:

Eye Spy – Find a photo or picture of a room and use it fo a game of Eye Spy. Remember with little ones to use the letter sound not just the letter name. This image is from the Linguascope.com website.

Scattegories – Perfect for the older ones – pick a topic and a letter and give them one minute to write 5 things (and only 5), eg. Green items smaller than my hand. At the end of the 1 minute they are given a point for each item BUT ONLY IF NO ONE ELSE HAS WRITTEN DOWN THAT ITEM.

Kim’s Game – Prepare a tray with 20 or so small objects. Using Zoom instead of sharing your screen, share content from a phone or iPad and put your camera ON on your device. Allow them to study the items for 1 minute and then remove and item – can they remember which item it is? Use more items with an older group.

A-Z – Pick a topic and starting on A and working all of the way to Z come up with words linked to your theme for each letter – this only requires thought as to whether the topic is suitable not really any preparation.

Name, Place, Animal, Thing – Again no real preparation, although I share this slide… Choose a letter and they all come up with an answer to each starting with that letter. Ask who has got all 4 and then ask one or two of these people to share their answers. An adjudicator can decide if it is ‘allowed’ or not!

Silly sentences – the younger ones love being silly so make cup a sentence and have a missing word – then listen to their silly versions of your sentence! Here are some:

Bingo

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Bingo is our biggest Zoom hit! All age groups love it. The easiest possible version is to get members to write down 9 different numbers between 1-20 in a 3 by 3 grid and then play for a line, 4 corners and a full house.

I have been using this website https://myfreebingocards.com/occasions/fourth-of-july/edit to create my own Bingo cards. Normally I put a copy of 1 or 2 in the post along with our activities and then we play on Zoom. The website does let you create up to 30 different cards, either all together in a pdf for printing or as individual card for emailing out and best of all it is FREE for up to 30 different cards.

We have about 15 in a group so I always give the young people 2 cards each so we can have multiple games. I get them to circle if they hear the word but they could use buttons or bits of paper so that each game can be played repeatedly.

Here are some suggested cards to get you going – we find that the 3×3 grid with NO FREE SPACE is the best.

Juniors — Sports – simple(ish) words to read and a good quick game

sports_bingoDownload

Company or older Juniors – Scotland – cities and towns in Scotland – we are using this for St. Andrew’s Day.

scotland_bingoDownload

Seniors – Survival – We have been using the BB resources on Survival and linking it into the money management etc. This one is all things they may need to spend money on if they live alone!

living_alone_bingoDownload

Company/Seniors – Climate Change – This has tricky vocabulary and concepts in and will make a good discussion afterwards too.

climate_change_bingoDownload

A VARIATION – Our older ones love to play ‘strip bingo’- before you panic we all keep clothes on and is about strips of paper!! On a strip of paper write 6 numbers 1-20 in a line. The caller calls numbers as normal BUT can and needs to call numbers more than once. The player tears off the bit of paper if the number is called BUT they can only tear t off when the number is at either end of the strip of paper. When they are waiting for one number they have to hold the strip in the air so that you know but check that they aren’t showing you the number. You can play the game with words too!

Strip Bingo with rooms of the house as a theme.

Zoom activities – no preparation at all!

Here are some no preparation ideas to use in Zoom (other platforms work too!) sessions with different age groups. I will follow this post with some low prep and some activities which require a bit of preparation. All of these have been tried and tested. Most can be played for 5 minutes – some will go on for much longer!

Under 11 – Simon Says – this works fabulously, just remember the delay and think about what you can ask them to do safely. If they are out they can just stop or with a large group ask them to put their video off when they are out – they can still play along but you can’t see them – this works for any game,

Under 11 – Opposites – Basically they do the opposite of what you say. Tall (bob down), small (stand on tip toes), stop (fake running on spot), go (freeze), eyes (point to ears), ears (point to eyes), shhh (make a noise), noisy (shhh finger on lips), sit down (stand up), stand up (sit down). You could add others too

Over 11 – Miming – Switch messaging to host only. Host messages a feeling to a member (sad/angry/happy/upset). They act out the feeling whilst the others guess.

Over 11 – Charades – as above but message a book/film title etc – this is actually really tricky on Zoom.

Under 11 – Show me – Say an item or a colour of an item and then give a count down – children go and find it and bring it back to show you. Be careful with the items you ask for and remind them to get the items carefully and think about how they move around their house!

Over 11 – 2 Truths and a lie – each person says three facts about themselves – one is lie – the others guess which is a lie.

Any Age – Would you rather… – This can be any age depending how it is managed and what options are given – Give too options ‘Would you rather have big hands or small feet?’ For little ones things like ‘Would you rather eat pizza or chips every day of your life?’ Older ones can be asked to explain their reasons too! If you don’t trust what they might suggest keep it so that the leaders create all of the questions (we usually ask each leader to come up with 2 or 3).

Under 11 – Reverse Charades – Tell them an activity and together they all act it out. If you have multiple leaders get one to not look or listen or leave the room whilst you share the activity or emotion and then the leader can guess what they are all doing.

Over 11 – Humming – one person chooses a song and hums it – everyone guesses – start with just a few seconds being hummed but do more if they find it tricky! Another version of this is to ‘clap’ the song! It’s actually quite tricky this way.

Under 11 – Eye Spy – Basically the normal game but it has to be things you can see in peoples backgrounds – it can be extra fun if people use virtual backgrounds. Remember to give sounds not just letters with little ones.

Over 11 – A to Z – Pick a loose topic, eg Food, the first person starts with A and names something in the topic (Apple) person 2 does B etc, how quickly can you do this and get through the whole alphabet?!

Pancake Day/Shrove Tuesday – February

This week was pancake day so naturally we had to eat pancakes!  The younger ones enjoyed choosing their toppings and they all had a go at tossing their pancakes although success in this was limited.

 

Here is a quiz for the Juniors Shrove Tuesday Quiz as well as some puzzles Shrove Crossword and shrove wordsearch.  With older ones you could just remove the multiple choice options from the quiz.

Lent is a big part of this and the company/Seniors will discuss this.  They will be set a challenge using this:

With the older ones we are looking at pancake day facts and although old, this is useful.

Happy Shrove Tuesday!

Valentines – February

Valentines is an opportunity to discuss the many forms of Love and we used it in different ways with different age groups:

• We had an easy multi choice quiz with the Juniors valentines quiz
• With the Anchors we printed these hearts on to pink and red paper, which the children cut out to make pictures hearts
• The Company Section made wind chimes using the wind chime kits – these were on offer and about 75p each https://www.bakerross.co.uk/arts-and-crafts/hearts
• The Juniors used Sharpies to colour in Baker Ross Suncatchers – they worked out at less than 50p each https://www.bakerross.co.uk/arts-and-crafts/hearts
• These great cheap toast stamps from the Co-op supermarket kept everyone entertained (and fed).
  

  
• We talked about Love being a form of really liking something and these ‘I love’ templates led to some great photos and discussions i-love…
  

  

  

  

  
• Love themed Pictionary went down well with the company. They play in teams of 3 or 4 to a table, where they number themselves. number ones come up first and get the first word, when someone has guessed it in their team, number 2 comes for the 2nd word etc, staff just wander to check for obvious cheating and the winning team is the first team to finish! pictionary
• “Love is patient” 1 Corinthians 13 – this was our discussion with one group – we discussed being patient and kind to siblings and parents as well as friends.
• The younger ones discussed “love your neighbour” and talked about kindness and Random Acts of Kindness as well as the gift of a smile.
• With the older group we talked about love and respect.  We started off with this advert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp2xfCwCzNA and then looked at love and respect using this advert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcSP1r9eCWw We had some great discussions about love being for everyone, loving people for who they are not what they look like, as well as respecting peoples rights to use names and pronouns.  This was a fabulous discussion and we linked it back to 1 Corinthians 13 at the end too.

Numbers

NSPCC Numbers Day or just for a general bit of fun…

We looked at numbers in life and the bible, the significance of 12 and 40.  We talked about the number of books in the bible and any bible stories containing numbers.  We also talked about numbers in fairy stories and history too.  This was a great discussion and easily adapted for all ages.

For the older ones we used a book of adult dot to dots and for the younger ones we used these:

We also used this quiz with the Juniors as a multiple choice and as a normal quiz with the Company Section. Numbers Feb

We had great fun with a Beetle Drive, but it took longer than expected.  All you need is a copy of this sheet each, plus a pencil each and a dice for each group of 3 or 4. Beetle Drive

We played the drama game 1, 2, 3 (otherwise known as concentration game).  Children in pairs facing each other say 1, 2, 3 taking turns and going back to one (it is much harder than it sounds).  You then replace 1 with an action, eg. a clap and continue (clap, two, three, clap, two, three etc) and so on until it is 3 actions.  Stand in a line and do it again, the pair where one hesitates or gets it wrong is out!

Company Section loved Bingo and had surprisingly never heard the traditional bingo calls so had great fun learning these too!  The Juniors and Anchors also played snakes and ladders and Uno.  Darts went down well with Company Section too!

Enjoy!

 

Jonah/World Oceans Day

We looked at World Ocean’s Day with the older ones, but took this as an opportunity to use the story of Jonah with the younger ones. Here are some activities:

• Make Ecobricks with bottles – https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/news/news-archive/2019/what-is-an-ecobrick 
• Watch a video clip about the sea – we watched some of Blue Planet
• Here is puzzle suitable for Juniors jonah
• Here is a colouring suitable for Anchors jonah
• We used this BBC Teach version of the story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jrh375bd_LA
• We played ‘dead fishes’
• Also a quiz for the older ones
• We did activities using water… the Skittles one with warm water was popular
• The Anchors painted on the floor outside with water

Red Nose Day – Comic Relief – March

Here are some additional Comic Relief Resources used this year:

• A Red themed wordsearch red ite,s
• Kims Game with Red Items
• A Red themed bingo Red Nose Day Bingo

St David’s Day

1st March is St David’s Day and here are a few ideas for you to try:

1. Draw a daffodil – still life drawing can be fun!
2. Here is a word search to try – it isn’t mine, I found it on the internet. Saint Davids Day Wordsearch
3. Blooming Flowers.  Copy this sheet onto yellow copy paper and cut out the flowers.  Loosely fold the petals in.  Place carefully into a tray of water to watch them open or bloom.  We put surprise messages or pictures under the centre – our photos are at the bottom. blooming-paper-flowers
4. St David is also linked to dragons, so here is a dragon dot to dot to keep them busy. dragon
5. For the younger ones CBBC has a quiz and video clips https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/lets-celebrate-st-davids-day
6. For the older ones, you could use these facts https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/facts-st-davids-day-wales-traditions-facts-welsh-costumes-leek/

Toilet Rolls

We used the theme of Toilet Twinning and the information from https://www.toilettwinning.org to do all things Toilet related.  Here are some of the things we did:

• We learnt about Toilet Twinning using the DVD in the educational pack.  There is a great PowerPoint on the website too!
• We sold squares to raise money with the hope of enough to Twin a Toilet
• We made toilet roll ‘Mummies’ to highlight the abundance of resources we have compared to the 4 million people without Toilet Roll
• We had a toilet themed quiz Howden Quiz – Toilet Roll
• We looked at the word for Toilet in different countries and did this puzzle toilets
• We played the Build a Bog game from the Toilet twinning website.  We didn’t cut out the pieces but instead printed 4 toilets to a sheet and played like a beetle drive colouring in the various parts. 4 games seemed enough to keep them busy but not enough for boredom to set in Build-a-bog-game
• As it is winter we made Toilet Roll snowmen.  All you need is ribbon, googley eyes, felt tip pens and buttons.  Strong glue and double sided tape make it quicker and easier too!