Child Friendly
These games and exercises are easy to learn and fun to play, great for groups of little ones!
Alien Tiger Cow
Instructions
- The group forms a circle.
- On the count of three all players strike a pose and make a noise as an alien, a tiger, or a cow.
- Alien: Hold your two index fingers up to your head like antennae and say "Bleep blorp!"
- Tiger: Throw your hands out like your clawing and roar.
- Cow: Hold your hands up to you stomach with your fingers sticking out like udders and say "Mooo!"
- Then repeat!
- You can play with the intention of everyone trying to land on the same pose or eliminate the minority group each time until there is only one or two players left.
Purpose
- This is a fun easy way to warm up. Great for children or beginners.
Tags
Child Friendly -
Exercise -
Party -
Warm Up -
Bunny Bunny
Description
- The group forms a circle and everyone begins patting their legs in rhythm and chanting "zoom-ba zoom-ba".
- One player will start by saying(in rhythm) "bunny bunny" while making two pairs of bunny ears with their hands and pointing them at themself.
- That same player with then repeat the above step but point the bunny ears and someone else in the circle.
- That person who was pointed to will repeat the above two steps pointing to a new person, and we pass it around the circle.
- While any player is doing the bunny ears part, the two players on either side of them should face towards them and wave their arms left and right chanting "ticky tocky ticky tocky"!
- This game can go as long as it needs to or until it feels like we've exhausted the fun or novelty of it.
- Optionally the group can slowly ramp up the speed and end it once it becomes to fast to continue.
Purpose
- Great warm up to just prepare to be silly.
- Helpful listening exercise.
- Good for building up energy.
Tags
Child Friendly -
Energy -
Listening -
Party -
Warm Up -
Change
Description
- Two improvisers start a scene and a third acts as a host.
- The host will ring a bell or say a phrase like change! or new decision! periodically after a line of dialogue has been said.
- The improviser who said that last line of dialogue will have to say a new line of dialogue to replace it.
Example
- Improviser 1: What do you want?
- Improviser 2: I want a muffin.
- Host: Change!
- Improviser 2: I want a whole cake to myself.
- Host: Change!
- Improviser 2: I want you to love me again!
Tips
- Try to heighten each time you are made to change a line of dialogue and go for a drastic change on the third changed line.
- As the host, utilize the rule of three most of the time, only occasionally making the improvisers change only one line of dialogue or making them change many lines in a long run of changes.
Tags
Child Friendly -
Performance -
Scene Work -
Torture -
Character Panel
Description
- Three improvisers take a seat or stand on stage.
- A host welcomes the crowd to this special event where we have a panel of experts and gets a suggestion for the topic on which they are experts.
- Optionally the host can give the improvisers a chance to introduce themselves as their characters
- The host fields questions from the audience and lets the characters go down the line and answer them.
- The host can make some observations or inferences about the characters in between their answers and questions but shouldn't take up too much time talking themself.
Purpose
- Improvisers are able to make up a character and explore their perspective without worrying about other elements of scene work.
- Improviers will have to listen to their scene partners and make decisions that are distinct from them.
Tips
- Answers to questions should last too long, this isn't a monologue.
- Improvisers need to make sure their characters are very distinct from each other and have unique perspectives on the topic.
- Commit fully to their characters or this game will get boring real quick.
- The host should moderate the amount of questions based on how long they take to get through each character, usually 2-4 questions is best.
- Let a different character answer first in each round of questions.
Tags
Character -
Child Friendly -
Exercise -
Performance -
Taxi
Description
- One improviser is selected to be the taxi driver and guesser. They leave the room while the host or participating improvisers get suggestions.
- 3-6 other improvisers will be the cab riders. They will get suggestions for distinct characters to play.
- They can be cartoon characters, celebrities, innanimate objects, animals or anything else that can be played for comedic effect.
- Once all the suggestions are gotten, we can call back in the driver to start the scene.
- They'll mime starting off their day and soon pick up the first rider.
- The rider will give hints to the driver based on their behavior and answers to the cab driver's questions.
- Once the driver has an idea who they think the person might be they can begin guessing.
- Once they guess correctly they can drop off the rider and pick up the next.
Purpose
- This is a fun game to play with improvisers of all skill levels.
- The driver must listen and pay close attention to the character to try and guess who they are.
- New improvisers are forced to step outside themself and play a character.
Tips
- The rider's hints should start out relatively vague and get more obvious over time so as not to give it away too quickly, or spend too much time on one character.
- If it seems like the driver really can't get it, feel free, after some time, to just give it up with a rhyme - "You really don't know me? It rhymes with picky pouse!"
- If you're playing with only 2-3 passengers, or a particularly good guesser, feel free to give them a secondary characteristic after their character like...
- Spongebob Sqaurepants selling tupperware
- A blender whose dog ran away
- A thunderstorm with a crush on John Cena
- A praying mantis who is obsessed with reality tv
Tags
Character -
Child Friendly -
Guessing -
Performance -