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Clean confetti

Can your team collect enough clean confetti from the confetti river, without polluting your cup?
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You will need

  • Multi-coloured confetti (including some blue pieces)
  • Paper cups (two for each team)

 

Before you begin

  • Create a river of multi-coloured confetti at one end of your meeting place. Pour the confetti straight onto the floor in a long, curved, shape.

Talk about water

  1. Everyone should talk about the ways they use water on a daily basis. How do you use it when you’re getting ready in the morning? What about at school or work? What about at dinner time?
  2. The person leading the game should explain that millions of people live without access to clean water. In some places, children have to collect water for their families; this can mean walking long distances up to four times a day, and that children can’t go to school.
  1. Everyone should talk about what may make water unclean. Lots of different things can pollute water, for example, oil, sewage, pesticides, plastic, rubbish, or chemicals from factories.

Get ready to play

  1. Split into small teams that are roughly the same size. Give each team two cups.
  2. Each team should line up on the other side of the room to the river, facing the river.
  3. The river is full of water (the blue pieces of confetti), but it’s unclean. The other colours of confetti represent all of the pollutants people talked about earlier.
  1. The person at the front of each line should put one of the cups on the floor. This is their team’s home cup, which will hold all the water they collect.

Collect the confetti

  1. The first person in each line should take the other cup (the collection cup), and run to the river.
  2. When they reach the river, they should collect as many blue pieces of confetti as they can, putting them in their collection cup. They shouldn’t pick up any other colours of confetti. Once a piece of confetti is in the collection cup it can’t be taken out again.
  1. The person leading the game should time ten seconds. Once ten seconds is up, the player should run back to their team and transfer everything from the collection cup to the home cup. Once a piece of confetti is in the home cup, it can’t be taken out again.
  1. Everyone should repeat steps one to three, until everyone in the smallest team has had a turn.
  1. Once everyone’s had a turn, everyone should get back into a big circle.
  2. Everyone should count the pieces of confetti in their home cup. Blue pieces are worth one point. Teams lose one point for each piece of other coloured confetti, because these are the pollutants that make the water unclean.
  3. The winning team is the one with the most points, after their clean water’s been counted and any points have been taken off for any pollutants.
  4. Now it’s time to reflect on what it means to be a citizen in a world where not everyone has access to clean water, and what it means to respect people who have different backgrounds to us. We’ve included some questions below to get you started.

Reflection

This game reminded you to respect people with different backgrounds to you. How do you think it feels to be someone who doesn’t have access to clean water, who may have to work hard to collect unclean water? What things do you think may happen because people don’t have access to clean water (for example, they may get poorly, miss school, not be able to keep themselves clean)? Was it difficult to separate out the blue confetti from the pollutants? How difficult would your life be if you didn’t have access to clean water? What does it mean to you to show respect to people who don’t have access to clean water (even though you won’t always meet them)? Could you try to be sensible with your own water use or raise awareness of the issue?

This game also reminded you that you’re a local, national, and international citizen. Part of being an international citizen is knowing that everyone, no matter where they live, has rights. Does everyone have the right to clean water? How do you feel knowing that some people still aren’t able to access clean water?  In real life, there are some ways to clean and filter water, like a water filter system (boiling doesn’t remove everything, and water purification tablets are expensive). As international citizens, we have responsibilities to other people across the world. Do you have a responsibility to help people who don’t have access to water? How could you help them (for example, raising awareness, working with WaterAid)? 

Safety

Active games

The game area should be free of hazards. Explain the rules of the game clearly and have a clear way to communicate that the game must stop when needed.