This M&M icebreaker is a great youth group game for team building, as it helps your young people get to know each other better.
It’s an activity that can be enhanced by you and the other leaders participating too, as it gives the youth a chance to get to know you better as well.
Here’s how to play this icebreaker:
Resources
- Large bowl of M&Ms
- Pen & paper (for the list)
Preparation
Prepare a list of six questions (see the questions section below for more details)
Rules
Have the young people sit in a circle. Give one of the young people the bowl of M&Ms and tell them to take a handful, but instruct them not to eat any yet. Once they’ve taken some, they should pass the bowl to the person on their left, who should then take a handful. Continue this until everyone has some M&Ms.
Once everyone has some candy, explain the next stage. For each M&M that they have in their hand, they have to share something about themselves. Each color M&M will have a different subject that they have to share about.
Each time they share something, they get to eat the M&M it related to – continue this until every person has shared enough for all their candy to be eaten.
Questions
There are usually six colors in a pack of M&Ms – red, green, blue, yellow, orange and brown – so you need to come up with a list of six questions that the young people should share about.
These can be about anything you like, but here is a list of some different ideas to get you started:
- Earliest childhood memories
- Favorite restaurants
- Favorite songs
- Hobbies
- Favorite Bible story
- Dream jobs
- Favorite games
- Something nice about another person in the circle
- Favorite movies
- Favorite candy
- Dream vacation
- Something they love about their parents
When you’ve decided on the six subjects, write them down so that the youth can refer to the list during the icebreaker and allocate a color to each one. Flipchart paper is ideal for this, but it could just as easily be written on a regular sheet of paper if there’s no flipchart available.
Tips
- If you have a large group, this youth group game could take quite a long time, so make sure that’s built into your session plan
- Similarly, a large group = lots of M&Ms needed, so have a spare bag (or two) just in case
- One or more of the topics could be based on what you’ll be discussing later in the session. For example, if you’re playing this at Thanksgiving, one of the topics could be “Something you’re thankful for”
Lasting Record
As we mentioned above, this M&M icebreaker is a great way for you and your young people to get to know each other better. After a few weeks though, it’ll be easy to forget everything that was shared.
Therefore, have one of your volunteers write down everything that’s shared as they go around, complete with who said what. This will give you a lasting record of what’s important to your young people.
This can then be used in a couple of different ways:
- For their benefit – During the same session (or even future sessions), you could highlight similarities between young people based on the things they like. This is perfect for team building – particularly if your youth group is in the forming stage – as it emphasizes common ground, rather than differences between them. It also gives them something to talk about in the future.
- For your benefit – Keeping this record will give you something to refer back to when planning activities for your youth group or subjects to discuss in the future. It’ll also help give you things to chat to them about in the future, as you’ll have a better idea of their interests.
Question: What other tips can you give to maximize this M&M icebreaker? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
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