Human Knot Icebreaker Game

Starting Out

Starting out is a very simple process. Breakup all participants into a few groups. Keep the number to under 10 players for large groups, and around 5 for smaller groups. The group size is important to determining the experience of the players. A few people together can learn each other’s names and build relationships as they go. A larger group forces patience and cooperation but might not allow for as much “getting to know you” time. Regardless, make sure that everyone has a name tag on, and then make your own human knot.

Holding Hands

Everyone needs to be holding hands, and you need to make a knot that connects people in a twisted way. The twister setup that you do for the game is going to be easy to untie, but you have to make sure that you have done all that you can to make the knot complex. Everyone is going to keep holding hands, and they will need to untie themselves. This is where everyone has to get to know each other because they have no choice.

Place all players in a circle facing each other. From there, everyone will lock hands with two other people. A couple of rules to follow, a left hand should hold a left hand and a right hand holds a right hand. Make sure when the players start locking hands, they do not lock hands with the people directly next to them. If you follow those two rules, you should be able to untie the knot.

Starting the Game

You are going to ask everyone to start to untie the knot, but they are not going to be untie the knot unless they keep holding hands. Holding hands might be awkward for everyone to do when they do not know the names of those around them. This icebreaker will encourage those in the group to share their names while untying the knot. Learning names will make team cooperation easy and fun.

Waiting

You have to remember that they are going to wait sometimes when they do not know how they are going to be able to get the job done. They have more time to talk because this game can get kind of complicated. These people know that they are going to have to work hard at it to get it done, but they might take a break just to talk. This can be helpful, and is the real reason for any icebreaker.

Pushing the Group

There will come a time when you need to push the group because you know that they are going to have to actually finish. It might be funny to leave everyone in knots, but you might need to have them to keep working on the knot. You can actually show them what to do, and then you can let them keep going on their own to get done. This means that they can get the knot finished with some help, but these people already know each other’s names.

A group that moves really fast is going to have a chance to go back and try a harder knot, and that could be really fun because it is your first chance to get them to do something that is even harder. You might not have an idea if they can do the bigger knot, but it will be fun to try. People are going to learn names, and they are going to have a chance to work out their brains on something that is really complex.

Doing it Blindfolded

You cannot do the whole game blindfolded, but you can blindfold every other person or even just one person in the group. This means that the people who can see have to give direction to the people that are blindfolded, and you also need to remember that it is going to be easier for these people to learn names because they have no choice.