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This section is aimed at some exercises you can use outdoors and indoors to develop team skills and leadership skills. Thanks to Simon D who provided many of these exercises. For many of these you will need scrap material or visit a scrap store - or a place where you can pick up crates, ropes, mats, string, cloth etc for cheap!

In these games, you can mark teams for ingenuinty, for teamwork, individuals and look for skills to grow. Have facilitators on standby. Work with the facilitators beforehand (maybe use young people as we have done) to train them in how to facilitate, how to encourage team working and drawing individuals from their shell / keeping them quiet as needs be.

Rescue from the desert island

You will need: a couple planks of wood and three crates.

Have 2 bits of rope facing each other and set around 10 metres apart. Nominate one person from the team who stands behind one side of rope. The rest of the team stand behind the other bit of rope as pictured.

rescuer gif

The planks of wood and 3 crates start off with the rescuer behind the rope. The rescuer must get the rest of his/her team across from their side to his side. At no time can any part of anyone's body touch the ground in between the 2 ropes otherwise points are deducted. Crates and planks cannot be thrown, they must be placed.

The key: is to use the planks of wood to sit on the crates. So, crate 1 goes out and the rescuer takes plank 1 and crate 2 with them. They place crate 2 a short distance away and place plank 1 on top of and linking crates 1 and 2. They then get plank 2 and crate 3 and place them ahead of crate 2 etc.


Giant Sack Race

For this, you have to get hold of a large sack - the kind of thing that builders use to deliver large amounts of sand or aggregate. These are huge strong bags with handles and can be found at merchants such as Bradfords or similar companies. Get up to 4 young people in each between start and end points defined by sand.

The fastest times win - or the most lengths done (start to end counts as 1, back to the star counts as 1 etc.) - marks are given for jumping style - if any part of the young people's feet touch the floor in between the start and end, they lose points. You'll find the best teams will hold on to the sack, stand close to each other and work out a system of jumping together at the same time.

You can add a twist by having a game where the purpose is to get in between the 2 points as fast as possible using the sack and not allowing anyone's feet to touch the floor. In this instance teams may well choose not to use the sack to jump in, they may find creative ways round it.


Giant's Footsteps

For this y'all need 2 large planks of solid wood. Go get some down the builder's merchants or legally pilfer some remnants from somewhere as it's way cheaper. The tip is a good place to have a look.

The length of the wooden planks is up to you but it should be at least 3 metres (to fit 3-5 people on it). Thew width needs to be such that you can easily fit someone's foot onto it - so a minimum of 6-8 inches.

In 3-5 places on each plank of oak you firmly wrap around and then attach 3-5 pieces of rope. Make sure these are attached firmly with metal screws or special hooks hammered in - all on the same side of. Once attached there needs to be enough rope on either side of each plank so that when someone stands on the plank they have enough slack to hold the rope once standing. So the total length of each piece of rope may be 1.5 to 2 metres.


The purpose of this is for 3-5 young people to step one foot onto each plank, take a bit of rope in each hand and then manouevre themselves forward as fast as possible as a team - between 2 points.

If I haven't explained this very well, here's a couple diagrams to explain:



