Have You Ever?

Size: 5+

Equipment: Chairs, or something to mark how many seats there are in the circle (one less than the number of participants).

Objective: Ice Breaker, energy burner, appropriate social interactions, keeping the topic appropriate, overcoming social anxiety/public speaking, communicating personal boundaries

Description:
Procedure: Arrange group into a large circle with one person in the middle. The person in the middle will prompt with the phrase Have you ever ? and then finish the phrase-- Example: Have you ever had a candy bar for breakfast?

Each person in the circle who has done what the person in the middle has said (ever had a candy bar for breakfast) will quickly exchange places with someone else that has also done it. (A person can’t trade places with the person immediately to their left or right). Whoever is left without a seat will finish the phrase the next
time.

The game has no real end so you can play 2 or 20 times, it’s up to you!

Process:
-why are boundaries important?
-how do you decide when something is or is not appropriate to say or do?
-recognize your typical place in a group setting--are you comfortable with that or would you like to change that?
-what can you do to respect others’ personal space?
-why do we set boundaries?
-how can we communicate our boundaries?
-how do you feel safe in a group setting?

Variation: Give each participant a role to play (ie. Passive, argumentative, bring up a taboo topic, talking too loud, talking too soft, demanding, ect.) and have them play a few rounds in these “inappropriate” roles-process what it was like, and then play again, encouraging appropriate social boundaries.

Submitted by Jessica Hohenberger