Claudia Lister
Training Commissioner and Pathfinder Guider in PEI
dblister@pei.sympatico.ca
Madhatter's Tea Party Game
You need an odd number of people in
each group. We used 7, but 5 would work as well. Three would really be
too small.
Give each person in the group an open ended question like... "the best
thing that happened to me this week was..." or "I really hate it
when...", etc. Be creative and make sets of questions for each group so
each group has the same 7 questions, but each person only has one
question.
Now have them line up their chairs so there are 3 down one side facing 3
down the other side, and have one person at the top or "head" of the
table, the Madhatter.
The Madhatter starts by reading her question out loud to the group. Then
one side of the "table" starts, and the 3 people on that side make eye
contact with their partner opposite them, and answer the question out
loud. You need one timekeeper for the whole room, who times one minute.
The room can get pretty noisy. The timekeeper yells switch, and the
other "side" of the "table" gets a turn to answer the question. Believe
me, they haven't had any time to think about their answer, because
they've been too busy listening!! After one more minute, the timekeeper
yells, "Teacups" and everyone moves one chair clockwise, which puts a new
Madhatter at the head of the table, and she reads her question, etc,
until all of the questions have been read and answered.
Lots of fun, very hectic, and VERY noisy.