The Levitan Website
A personal website
Earth, water, air
Minimum number = 6
The children stand in a circle. One has a ball and throws it to another child. As they do so they call out one of the three elements: earth, water or air. The child who catches
the ball then has to call out the name of an animal which lives in that element, e.g. for ‘air’, they might call out ‘blackbird’. If a child cannot answer or answers incorrectly,
they are out or have to pay a forfeit. Each animal can only be named once.
The winner is the last one in the game.
A variation on this is included here: "Earth, Air and Water"
Detective
Minimum number = 8
This is a variation on "wink murder".
One of the children is the detective and they go out of the room. While they are out the others choose a chief criminal. When the detective returns the chief does various actions which
the children copy as quickly as they can so that it is not easy to see who did the movements first. The detective has to try to find out who the chief
criminal is. They have three guesses. If they guess correctly they can
choose the next detective; otherwise the criminal becomes the next
detective.
Teapot
Minimum number = 6
Two children go out of the room and choose or are given a word with
two meanings, e. g. "train". They call this word "teapot". When they come back into the room they have a conversation using
the word in both its meanings. One might say “My brother just caught the last teapot and the other could reply “My brother wants to teapot the dog properly”. They carry on till someone
guesses the word. They choose a friend to go out with them.
A variation is for one child to leave the room and the rest decide on the word. When the child comes back in the room, each child in turn says a sentence that contains their word, but again substitting "teapot". This continues until the weord is guessed, and the detective then nominates the next person to leave the room.
