Theme

General

Age Range

7-18

Type

Games

Number of Participants

10+

Timescale

5-10 minutes

Quick overview

A great game to learn names and energise a group. This game is a simple task of trying to find a chair to sit on, made hard by everyone else also look for a chair.

Game type

Energiser/Name Game

Supplies you’ll need

Enough chairs for everyone in the group. minus one e.g. 15 people will need 14 chairs.

Game run-through

Have your group sat in a large circle with everyone but yourself sat on chairs.

Explain the basic premise of the game: This game is called The Sun Shines On, the objective is to always have a seat to sit on. Though this is the task, there will never be enough seats for everyone to be sat down at once – hence there will always be some stood in the middle.

To get out of the middle, the person left stood up at the end of the round must say: “Hello, my name is (Name) and the sun shines on (Topic).”

The topic the person chooses can be anything that the person in the middle thinks will get the most people out of their chairs. Some good examples are: “Hello. my name is (Name) and the sun shines on: all the people wearing red, all the boys/girls in the room, everyone who supports Worcester Warriors etc.”

Once the person has said this, everyone who this statement mentions must now get up and find a new seat. It helps to tell them that they can’t sit in their own seat or either seat on their left and right. For safety reasons, it also helps to give them the rule of no running but speedy walking as this helps to prevent slips or shoving.

It is only ever one person to a chair; no sharing chairs or sitting on someone’s lap.

This is a great game for time-filling as it can be played for many rounds without ending as no one ever gets knocked out but there is always the challenge of staying out of the middle.

A handy way of wrapping up the game is when a topic is called out and you want to finish, just standing up. This will allow for all the young people to take a seat and you can close with something like: “Hello my name is (name) and that was the sun shines on.”

Safety

Ensure there is nothing for the young people to trip up on while crossing the room.

Introducing rules prohibiting barging others and running will help stop collisions and tripping up.