Friday, October 29, 2010

Chain Gang

Alternative names: Daisy Chain
Objective: To have some fun and secretly get some team building done at the same time
Typical length of drill: 10-15 mins (but this can vary a great deal)
Materials needed: None
Skill level required: None
Description: This is a variation on a regular game of tag.  One skater is appointed "IT".  The coach blows the whistle and all the skaters begin skating around the practice space, including IT (and there is no "right direction" to skate in, the whole floor should be open to skating in all directions).  IT's objective is to catch other skaters.  When IT catches a skater this skater joins hands with IT and becomes part of IT.  The two now have to work together to catch more skaters and they are only allowed to use the hands that are not touching each other.  When the next person gets caught, s/he joins hands with the person who caught her/him and becomes part of IT as well.  Now the chain of three have to work together to catch more skaters, and again they are only allowed to use the hands that are not touching, meaning, the person in the middle can't do any catching, only skating and communicating.  The next person who gets caught will also become part of IT, and so on.  Eventually there will be a really long chain of skaters holding hands making up IT, working together to catch the few remaining skaters on the floor using only their size and the hands of the two skaters on the ends of the chain.  The game ends either when all the skaters have been caught or when there is only one skater remaining and s/he is designated the winner of the game.
Additional notes: When I started working with children I learned a lot of fun group games that I noticed were totally viable on skates as well; this is one of them.  I thought this was really fun to do on skates and it was really interesting to see what kind of strategies the skaters on the chain came up with!  If you have a really large space and a really large group of skaters you can appoint two ITs at the beginning and then make it a competition between the two chains to see which one has better teamwork skills and is able to catch more skaters.

Lire cet exercice en français!

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