Great Group Games: 175 Boredom-Busting, Zero-Prep Team Builders for All Ages Paperback – July 1, 2007

I have regularly used this book to plan adult and youth activities. It has been a great resource for team building, ice breakers, youth development, and more. I also use the book to plan and have activities prepared for when I substitute teach. It's great because the majority of the activities work for elementary, middle, and high school age classrooms so no matter where I find myself I always have some go-to activities ready. The activities are also easy to adapt to fit your specific needs. There are many fun games to build language and spelling skills, all of which can be adapted to include whatever vocab or spelling words you are working on. Lots of thought provoking questions to include in the activities so adults and children alike get the opportunity to think and discuss important topics or there are lighter-hearted questions which are great as general conversation starters. If these activities don't get your group up and moving, thinking, talking, and laughing then I don't know what will! I always find just what I need every time I crack this jewel of a book open!!

This book has been one of the best purchases I've made. The games are quick and easy to learn and implement and the kids have LOVED them. My 5th graders frequently ask to replay these games when we are stuck inside. Some favorites were Zip - Bong, Zoom-Wacka Zoom, and Pass the Can. I don't know what I would do without this great book!

my mental health group likes to have different team building activities for Friday as a warm down to the weekend and these activities are great. I really like the breakdown of each exercise, how long, the exercise, questions to ask at the end of the exercise and what areas does each exercise covers - everything I need to complete my report on how well the class went. The class enjoys it because it has so many different exercises to do. Great job.

I look at lots of game books and often see more of the same-old, same-old. Not the case here. Good stuff and much of it both fresh and easy to adapt. I'll hang onto this book for a long, long time; I'll mine it again and again for ideas.

Many of the ideas in this book would be very good for a teacher planning rainy day "recess" activities, but not so useful for most others.Pros:- Good variety of activities and goals to be accomplished by those activities- The "good" ideas are fantasticCons:- The idea that these are "zero-prep" is misleading. Most require you to use what they call "supplies" which must be set-up, distributed, or other-wise prepared- The authors list slight variations of the same game as entirely new ones. For example, having an individual scavenger hunt and doing it as a team is still just a scavenger hunt (there are at least 4 variations of a scavenger hunt that are all listed as different games)- Many of the explanations are confusing or incompleteBottom Line: The few things I like about the book, I absolutely LOVE. For example, there is an icebreaker that involves the group introducing themselves to the tune of a song. That idea is fantastic. However, the rest of the stuff is more of a psychological experiment than "zero-prep team builders for all ages".In my opinion, the book can be broken down roughly as follows:10% "Gems" - great, unique, and useful ideas60% Mediocre - so-so ideas; or ideas that could be good, but require too much explanation or impractical "supplies"30% Crap - lame, contrived, or flat out repetitive stuff

This is a really useful go-to guide for adding a variety of activities to meetings, retreats and trainings. They're well-organized, fully explained, and easy to implement. Some will be familiar but many will be new, thus adding a fresh creative aspect to your event. While some activities might work best with younger groups, most of them are great for all ages.

I needed this book for my Professional Counseling Class to come up with games for group counseling, and I came up some great games for the group thanks to this book.

practice them games in the book in class and it was great. nice working tool.