Chinese Whispers??

Not too long ago, we had a game night with my small group. As we were in between games, we had a conversation about games we used to play as kids. One of the games my British friends mentioned was Chinese Whispers. Now, this took a bit of thought and explanation, but I finally realized that it was the game of Telephone - you know, the game where "it" whispers a phrase to the first person and on down the line it goes until the last person announces the phrase they heard and it no longer is anything close to the way it started.

So tonight, it was my turn to do the starter at small group. Thanks to my friends Steve and April in Prague, I was able to introduce everyone to the coolest game ever - Paper Telephone (although we had to call it Paper Chinese Whispers, which doesn't have quite the same ring).

Here's how it works:

1. Give everyone a piece of paper and a pen and have them write a sentence down at the top of the page that could be drawn - so no use of the word preservative or tapioca or other hard to draw words.

2. Once everyone has their sentence, set a 1 minute 30 second time limit per round (this worked pretty well for us, you can adapt based on your players). Pass the paper to the left. Start the timer. Read the sentence at the top of your paper and attempt to illustrate it. Keep your drawing relatively small scale so that there is plenty of paper left. No words are allowed in the illustration and no talking during the game.

3. When time is up, fold back the part of paper with the sentence, so that only the drawing is showing and again pass left. Start the timer. This time you have to write a caption for the drawing.

4. When time is up, fold back the drawing so that the new sentence is showing. Pass left. Start timer. Illustrate.

On it goes until you get back the one you started with. Then open your papers and see the transformations. It's a great game and can be hilarious. I wouldn't recommend playing it with more than 10, 8 to 9 is probably ideal. This might could even be incorporated into an ESL lesson (hint, hint Erin).

My all time favorite transformation from tonight was "Too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth" becoming "Four happy cooks tried to feed the sad children."

I think you have to see the illustrations though to really get it.

Happy Playing!

P.S. I did not intend the pun in first paragraph, it's just the phrase that fits!