Customer Reviews

Ice-Breakers and Heart-Warmers: 101 Ways to Kick Off and End Meetings

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a great book if you have a small group, say 5 or 6, and are doing this for a church function. It had great ideas, but I could not use it because my group was larger, and not all christians. I needed something a little more general.

Imagine being forced into a new setting with a group of people you don't know. You're nervous about what people will think of you. Will you do or say something stupid?

This book really helps banish these fears, because, in effect, everyone is required to act silly for a few moments. For example, show the group your hidden talent (in our group, people seemed to be very double-jointed)! What does your name mean and why were you named it? There are some interesting stories out there. Shy people are also required to participate...thus getting them to speak -- which they may not do otherwise.

The more we do ice-breakers, the looser we become. It helps for starting out Bible studies, when people might be worried their thoughts will come across as "stupid." These activities help you realize it's OK to be silly, and to loosen up.

I only gave the book four stars because it's very vague on copyright. Some of the ice-breakers are "visual" -- they require that everyone "see" a specific page in the book (some activities use graphics). Is it OK to photocopy these pages so our group can use them? I looked all over for information/permissions regarding this, but couldn't find any. Another reason it only gets four stars... my mom lost the book soon after we got it, so I didn't get to try too many of the ice-breakers out on my group. So, we're getting the sequel ASAP.

It has many icebreaking activities but was simply too church-oriented for me to use it at all since I deal with school and secular groups primarily. It would be a lot of work to remove all the religious references. And many of the activities seem to be repeats from many other books I've read. Not as innovative as it ought to be. Since people attend lots of meetings, you've got to have new activities in order to keep them from being bored.

Still, if it had been titled with "for Church Group leaders" it'd be a great resource.

I bought this book for a team-building at work, and was very disappointed because 95% of the suggestions were based on religion. The other 5% was not even worthy of suggesting to the group because it wasn't creative as I would have liked it to be, for adults.

I am using this book to help me get to know Seniors at my church and I really think it is going to work for me.