Dinosaur Game

Choose this exercise

Purpose: Re-energize a group through playful vocalization, impulse control, and physical movement.

Use it when: Use as a high-energy transition after sedentary presentation blocks or during a mid-afternoon lull.

Skip it when: Skip when the session calls for serious, sensitive focus, or when participants are uncomfortable with silly vocalizations and facial play.

Group arrangement: Single standing circle; eliminated players step into an outer perimeter

Timing: UWT suggested 10 minutes (sources indicate a short warm-up format under 5 to 10 minutes)

Materials and tools

• No special materials.

Before participants arrive

1. Clear an open floor space large enough for the entire group to form an uncrowded standing circle.

Say this to open

We are going to play the Dinosaur Game. Our job is to pass an arm wave around the circle while making our best dinosaur roars. There is one strict rule: you cannot show your teeth at any point. Pull your lips over your teeth. If you show your teeth, you step outside the circle and become a distractor.

How to run it

1. Practice wave and lip posture 2 minutes

   Invite everyone to form a standing circle. Participants may hold hands or hold imaginary connectors without touch. Demonstrate covering your teeth with your lips. Send an arm wave around the circle clockwise, then reverse it counterclockwise until everyone has caught and passed the movement.

2. Introduce dinosaur roars 2 minutes

   Explain that passing the wave now requires making a guttural dinosaur sound directly to your neighbor while keeping your teeth completely covered. Run one practice pass where each person sends a roar and wave to the next person.

3. Run elimination rounds 4 minutes

   Allow the wave to change direction freely. When a person receives the wave, they turn and pass it either left or right with a roar. If a sender or receiver smiles, laughs, or flashes their teeth, they step outside the circle. Eliminated players become distractors: they can make goofy faces and safe noises from the perimeter to break the concentration of the circle, but they cannot touch anyone or block anyone's view. Play until two players remain or time expires.

4. Close and reflect 2 minutes

   Call time. Invite the whole group back into a relaxed circle. Take 2 to 3 brief comments on what made it hardest to keep a straight face.

Debrief questions

• What made it hardest to keep your teeth covered?
• How did the energy in the room shift once distractors started working from the outside?

Finished output: A fast energizer round completed with all participants regrouped for the next agenda item.

Remote

This game requires in-person proximity to read lip postures and pass physical arm waves. For a remote setting, run an alternative no-teeth round-robin called Toothless Newsroom: participants keep cameras on, take turns delivering a serious ten-second news headline while hiding their teeth over their lips, and turn their cameras off if they expose their teeth or laugh.

Hybrid

Hybrid delivery is not recommended because physical wave dynamics do not translate fairly across video screens. Run the in-person circle while remote colleagues run the Toothless Newsroom alternative in a breakout room, or pick a separate whole-group digital energizer.

Access and participation choices

• Participants may pass the wave by lifting an arm toward their neighbor without physical hand-holding.
• Anyone who prefers not to make vocal noises or hide teeth may opt directly into the non-contact distractor role or serve as the official teeth referee.

If the session gets stuck

Participants disagree over whether someone briefly showed teeth.

Appoint yourself or an early volunteer as the sole lighthearted judge; keep rulings quick and keep the wave moving.

Distractors get too close or physical with circle members.

Remind distractors to stay two steps back and rely strictly on expressions and sounds without physical contact or obstructing views.

Terms used here

• Distractor: An eliminated player who moves outside the circle to make safe noises and faces that tempt remaining players into laughing.