Opening Activities

OVERVIEW

By asking reflective and self-assessment questions, participants are invited to share a bit about how they’re feeling and how they’re coming into the space.

OBJECTIVES

• To see how everyone is coming into the program on any given day.

STEP-BY-STEP FACILITATION GUIDE

Ask an open-ended question and invite participants to elaborate as much or as little as they would like. Example check in questions:

• Weather report: what’s your internal weather report today? e.g., today is cloudy, today is warm and sunny, today is windy but I feel okay in my coat, etc.

• Battery level: what’s your “battery level” at coming into the session today? This could be answered in colors (red, yellow, or green) or in percentage.

• Current playlist: what music or song represents your mood right now? If possible, play a bit of the song aloud for the group.

These questions can also be done in the form of self-reflection and do not necessarily need to be shared with the room. Offer a prompt to the participants and invite them to spend a few minutes making notes in response. Building in time to reflect helps as a grounding practice.

What are other check-in questions you’ve used or heard before? Write down some examples here:

Check-in Activities You might decide to build an activity or icebreaker into the start of a session. Below are some examples.

Yarn Toss

In this icebreaker, participants introduce their name and one characteristic about themselves before tossing the ball of yarn or string it to another person in the circle, making a web.

Instructions:

• Sit in a circle with everyone facing inwards, towards the center of the circle.

• Tell everyone your name and one characteristic about yourself. You could also have everyone answer a common question, such as one of the check-in questions above.

• Holding firmly to the end of the string, toss the ball of string to someone in the circle.

• The person receiving the ball gives their name and one characteristic.

• Then, holding firmly onto the string, they toss the ball on to another person who hasn’t received it yet.

• The string should be held tightly and above the ground at all times.

• Continue until everyone has received the string and told the group their name and one characteristic.

A variation of this activity is to have the yarn be passed to a person in the circle who shares something in common with what was just said. For example, if the opening question is “what is something you like to do?” and the first person says “I enjoy reading”, they will need to identify and pass the yarn to another reading-lover. This facilitates connections between participants.

Follow-up questions:

• Have someone in the group pull the string – What happens? Or you could have everyone pull the string tight then cut the string in the middle – What happens?

• In what ways does this string represent various relationships in the group?

• Note that relationships are intertwined and connected. If a single person pulls the string it affects everyone in the group to varying degrees.

Human Chain

In this icebreaker, participants introduce their name and find points of connection with each other.

Instructions

• One person begins by standing up, introducing their name, and then describing things about themselves, eg. “I love to sing”.

• The first person who feels like they have that in common with the speaker walks over and connects arms with them. Note: multiple people might have things in common but only one person [whoever is first] connects arms.

• The new person then continues the process by introducing their name and describing things about themselves until someone else feels like they have something in common with them.

• This process continues until everyone in the room is linking arms in a chain. The last person introduces themselves and describes themselves until the first person that went has something in common with them, linking the two ends of the chain together in a circle.

Note on consent: Connecting arms may not be comfortable for participants, you can use an alternative like standing shoulder to shoulder, or having everyone pass a ball of yarn, like in the above activity.

Note on accessibility: Based on varying mobility needs, this activity can also be spoken aloud without moving. Or, as mentioned above, yarn string can be passed around to note the connections.

Variations:

• Split the group into pairs, and have each pair create a list of 10 things they have in common.

• Split the group into small groups, have each group find things that are shared and unique: things they all have in common, and things that are unique to each person.