Get your children in the Christmas spirit of giving and receiving with this fun game. Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas: this game will help develop imagination, build mime and physical theatre skills and demonstrate co-operation between your children.

How it Works:

Sit the children in a circle. Explain that they will need to think of a gift that they want to give to the person sitting to their left (don’t say it out loud!). They should think of something that that person would really like. Encourage them to think about the size, weight, colour and material of the gift, and any other words they can think of to describe it, such as its use or special features.

Then, you begin the game by giving your imaginary gift to the person next to you. Hold your hands out in front of you as though you are holding the gift, displaying the size and shape and how much it weighs by your actions “This gift is large/small/tiny/giant and it is very heavy/light. It is red/green/blue and it is made of plastic/wood/paper. You can throw it/eat it/play with it. It is a …, and it is my gift to you.” Hand the imaginary gift to the first child, who says “Thank you for my gift.”

They then put the imaginary gift down on the floor in front of them, then pick up the ‘gift’ they are going to give to the person beside them. Encourage them to show the size, weight and shape of it through their mime. They then describe their gift in the same format as you, and give it to the next person, and so on.

Top Tip:

You can adapt this activity for the age and ability of your class by requesting more or fewer describing sentences, and altering what information you want from them. If your children are great with languages, get them to use vocabulary that they know in that language, particularly the colours and sizes. Keep the pace up by giving them plenty of time to plan their gift beforehand, so that when it comes to saying it out loud, they know what to say. Get them to write it down if it’s easier.

Take it Further:

To increase the difficulty of the game and introduce some competitive stakes – you could ask your children to guess what the gift someone is giving is. If children in the class correctly interpret the mime – give a point to the mime-performer just like in charades. Reward the person with the most points at the end of the session too if you like!