Outdoor Education Micro Tutorial – Camp Fire Games – Harrison Petkovich

Camp Fire Olympics

Split the Group into 2 even groups.
For each event, the group nominates a person to compete for their team.
The team with the most points at the end, wins the game.

Events:
- First person to put a Tangier together
- Person who finds the longest stick in 30 secs
- Team Charades – Jesse or Dave choose something for the person to act out for their
team to guess.
- Who can hold the longest plank?
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Geography Game
Minimum 3 players
Equipment needed: none
Another more chilled evening game that is a good quick filler to warm a group up.
 Someone starts by naming a country, for example, China
 The next person has to think of a country that starts with the last letter of the first
country. (e.g. Argentina could follow China)
 As a variation, you can also use animals or names of people

Animal Noises
Minimum 6 players
Equipment needed: none
This is another easy but fun campfire game which will have your group laughing. You just
need to know each other well enough to remember names.
 Someone is blindfolded and stands in the middle
 Everyone starts to walk around the person in a circle. Alternatively, you can have
someone spinning the person in the middle around until they are disorientated
 The person in the middle will shout stop and everyone has to stand still or they are
stopped by the ‘spinner’
 They will then randomly point to someone in the circle and say the name of an
animal
 The person they point at will then have to make the sound of the animal
 If the person in the middle can guess who said the noise then they swap with them,
otherwise, they keep going

Wink murder

 One person, the ‘detective’, leaves the campfire so that they are out of earshot.
 The rest of the group choose one person to be the ‘murderer’. Everyone should
know who this person is.
 The detective is invited back to join the circle to observe as a dramatic crime
scene unfolds around them.
 The murderer ‘kills’ other members of the group by winking at them. If the victim
sees the murderer winking at them they must ‘die’. This can be done as dramatically as
the victim pleases! Or they can just close their eyes and let their head droop to the side.
 The detective must get to work quickly to figure out who the murderer is before
the whole group has been eradicated! If they do this, then they win the game and a new
detective is chosen.
 If the murderer manages to wipe out the whole group without being found out
then they win the game and become the next detective.

There Once Was a Skunk

This game is an exercise in silly yarn spinning. Someone in the group begins a story by
saying, “There once was a skunk who…” finishing the sentence however they wish. Then the
person points to someone else in the group who has to keep the story going with a new
sentence starting with, “Fortunately…” Then that person points to someone new who
continues the story starting with “Unfortunately…” Continue the story as long as you can,
rotating between sentences starting with “fortunately” and “unfortunately,” For instance,
the story might unfold like this:

“There once was a skunk who took ballet lessons.”

“Fortunately, he looked very good in a tutu.”
“Unfortunately, he got dizzy very easily and often tripped on his tail.”
“Fortunately, a drink of root beer always cleared up his dizziness.”
“Unfortunately, root beer sometimes made him flatuate uncontrollably.”

Chinese whispers

Late-night campfire games don’t get any better than this classic. It’s a good one to play if
you need to keep the noise down. That said, it can also get pretty silly with a constant risk
that eruptions of laughter will kill the tranquility!

 One person thinks of phrase. They can make it as simple or complex as they like.
But if it starts silly then it’s likely to only get sillier!
 The starting person whispers the phrase into the ear of the person sitting next to
them. They are not allowed to repeat themselves.
 Whatever has been heard by the listener must then be whispered to the next
person, and so-on.
 Once the phrase has been passed all round the circle the last person says it out
loud to the whole group. The results can be rather interesting!