Telephone Pictionary

Games. Kids love them, adults love them, and sometimes they require little more than some paper and pens... this is one of those games. 

I'm willing to bet most of us have heard (and likely played) the game Pictionary. It is pretty simple. You pick a word or phrase to draw, you draw it, and your team (hopefully) guesses what you are drawing. Telephone is similar to this game but (in this substitutes opinion) way more entertaining. 

First I would like to say that Pictionary is a great game to play with students. Write down a bunch of words or phrases on pieces of paper and let the kids use a class (because they were really good and deserve a free period) to play it. But that might get old fast. Why not spice it up a little by including everyone's favourite childhood game... Telephone! 

This game is best played with a small class. As in a REALLY small class. 

Was it -50 outside and the school buses weren't running so you have a class of only the brave souls who walked (or got a ride with their parents)? Perfect. 

Is half the school out with the flu? Perfect. 

Is it senior skip day and you only have the 5 students who no one bothered to tell? Really perfect. 

Whatever the case may be you have the smallest class known to man and since you aren't teaching anything and have already watched 2 movies you need something to fill the after lunch lull. 

How it works: 

1. Cut a bunch of pieces of paper in half. 

2. Every student will need a certain amount of pieces of paper. There is a really simple formula to figure this out. How many students are participating? Cut that number in half and that is how many papers everyone needs. So if 10 of you are participating then everyone will need 5 pieces of paper. 

3. Everyone starts by drawing a picture on one side of a piece of paper. The picture can be anything but since you are playing this at a school you should make sure they keep it PG. I would say set time limits otherwise you might have an artist in the crowd who holds up the process. 

4. Once everyone has drawn a picture everyone passes their entire stack of papers (including the one they drew on) one person to the left. 

5. Once the papers have been passed the new person will look at what you drew and write out what it was on the back of the piece of paper with the picture. They can use as much description as they want. 

*sidenote: This could also be a great lesson on using descriptive words* 

6. Once they are done writing they pass everything one more person to the left. 

7. Now this person is only allowed to look at what the person before them wrote. They are not allowed to look at the picture on the other side. Based on what they read they are to now take a new piece of paper and draw what they have read. 

8. Everyone passes it the left again once they are done drawing. 

9. And once again, after only looking at what the person before them drew on the back of that piece of paper they write what the picture is. 

10. You keep passing the papers and drawing or writing depending on the round until you end up with your original stack of papers in your hand. 

11. When you get your original papers back everyone takes time to share the progression of the drawings and the writings. Usually laughs are had and someone has to take an emergency trip to the bathroom because they almost pee their pants. 

Now I know you are dying to see an example of this... here is a set of the drawings and writings from the last time I played the game. 

ENJOY!