Hello, and welcome to the LANDED Blog.
We want to share with you six of our easy to facilitate, tried and tested digital youth work activity ideas - to help you host fun, engaging and interactive video calls with your groups.
Below you will find a list of activities we have been using on our Zoom meetings with our volunteer Peer Educators. We also use them when facilitating our Online Workshops and Training Courses. These online sessions cover topics such as tobacco, cannabis, drugs, alcohol, sexual health and even e-cigs.
We also design educational resources you can use to teach young people about these topics.
So, introductions aside, let us look at some of the activities:
1. Ice Breakers
An ice breaker is an effective activity, usually used at the start of a meeting or event to break the ice and stimulate discussion.
We have listed three ice breaker ideas below that you can try during your digital meetings.
Time Machine
Ask this question to your group: "If you were able to travel through time, either forward or, backwards where would you go? Why?"
To further the discussions, you could ask:
Would you take anyone with you?
What would you bring back as a souvenir?
Quarantine Habits
Ask this question to your group: "Since being under quarantine, what habits have you developed?"
To further the discussions, you could ask:
Do you think this habit is positive or negative?
Grateful Items
Ask this question to your group: "What are you grateful for since being in lockdown?"
To further the discussions, you could ask:
Did you appreciate this much before quarantine?
2. Show & Tell
Before signing on to the zoom call, Speak to your group members and ask them to prepare an item that they want to bring to show and tell. Use your zoom call to go round each participant and allow them 2 -3 minutes to tell us all about their item and the story behind it.
3. Your go-to quarantine snack
Is there a go-to snack you’ve been eating during quarantine? Any strange cravings or weird combinations you’ve created? Share it with your fellow 'zoomers'. You could use the share screen feature within your video call to show pictures or videos of your culinary creations!
4. Virtual Four Corners
Explain to the group that you’re going to close your eyes and count to 10 out loud. Whilst doing so, ask everyone to hold up either the number 1, 2, 3, or 4 with their fingers. Before you open your eyes, you need to shout out a number between 1 – 4. Whoever is holding up the number that gets called is knocked out of the game and must watch until there is a winner.
5. Hangman
Using the whiteboard feature built into Zoom, you can play a group game of hangman.
6. Video Chat Quiz
Quizzes are a great way of engaging groups, and you can make your own or find one online. The categories, topics, and length of the quiz are all up to you. We recommend:
A mix of questions (multiple-choice, true/false, puzzles, riddles)
Stick to a theme (TV Shows, Music, or Sports)
Have a prize! (A prize is a great motivator for engagement!)
If you want, you could make it fancy by putting together a quiz PowerPoint presentation and use the share screen feature to display it to everyone.
You'll probably notice that these aren't mind-blowing, cutting-edge or radical ideas. They're just simple, adaptable activities which have been slightly adapted for an online platform. In fact, you can alter most simple youth work activities to be used digitally.
Have you used some of these ideas with your young people or have some activities of your own? Get in touch and tell us how you got on!
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