SEL Games

Materials:

• Chairs

• Social-emotional prompts

How to play:

1. Write different social-emotional prompts on post-it notes.

2. Each round, place one of the prompts on a random chair.

3. When the music turns off and students find their chairs, there is a student sitting at a social-emotional seat. The student answers the prompt before moving on to the next round.

Source: https://proudtobeprimary.com/social-emotional-learning-games/

Materials:

• Emoji icons

How to play:

1. Tape a random emoji to each student’s back.

2. Students try to guess which emoji is stuck to their backs by asking 'yes or no' questions to other students.

Source: https://proudtobeprimary.com/social-emotional-learning-games/

For 3 or more players

Materials:

• Paper slips with random messages

How to play:

1. Students stand in a line.

2. The first student reads the paper slip and whisper the message to the next person.

3. Students pass the message on until it gets to the end of the line.

4. The last person in the line repeats the message for everyone to hear.

Rules:

1. Only whisper the message once.

Source: https://www.gamesver.com/telephone-chinese-whispers-101-how-to-play-rules-variations/

Materials:

• List of actions

How to play:

1. Create a list of different actions or have the students come up with their own ideas. Any action will do! Some examples might be waiting at the bus stop, sharpening your pencil, listening to music, running in a race, taking notes in class, etc.

2. Students act out the action for the others to guess. By acting out these scenarios, students need to consider what social cues would be aligned with that activity.

Source: https://www.thepathway2success.com/using-games-to-teach-social-emotional-skills/

Each group can have 10-12 people

How to play:

1. Students take the hand of anyone in the group except the person standing next to them. Ensure that everyone in the group is holding one other person's hand.

2. Students use their other hand to hold the hand of anyone in the group except the person standing next to them and the person they are already holding hands with.

3. Once everyone's hands are occupied, the challenge is to get untangled without letting go of each other’s hands.

Source: https://www.playworks.org/game-library/all-tangled-up-2/