Skip to main content

Volunteering at Scouts is changing to help us reach more young people

Volunteering is changing to help us reach more young people

Volunteering is changing at Scouts. Read more

Discover what this means

Jump your number

Memorise your telephone number by jumping the digits on a giant grid.

Back to Activities

You’ll need

  • A4 paper
  • Chalk
  • Hula hoops
Telephone keypad
PDF – 74.4KB

Before you begin

  • Encourage everyone to learn their phone number before you do this activity.
  • Check with parents or carers that it’s OK to use their landline or mobile number for the activity. Write each number down individually – without a name, so no one can be identified. Reassure everyone that the phone numbers will only be used for the activity and then destroyed.
  • If you have carpeted floors, you could use small hula hoops or masking tape, and write the numbers on paper next to them.

Call me

Everyone should talk about why it’s important to know their number. Reasons might include needing to call home to tell someone they’ve forgotten something or that they’re running late.

Jump your number

  1. The person leading the activity should separate everyone into groups depending on the number of keypads.
  2. The person leading the activity should give everyone their own phone number. They should be careful not to mix them up.
  3. One by one, everyone should jump or hop out their number on the grid, like a hopscotch grid. They should call each number out loud as they jump on it.
  1. The person leading could try speeding up or slowing down the activity. They could encourage everyone to use funny voices or even sing the numbers to help with learning.

Reflection

This activity helped everyone to realise the importance of learning a key phone number – especially for times they don’t have a mobile with them or their phone is broken. Everyone used different ways to help them remember their number including singing and repeating the digits. Talk about the techniques people used to remember the order of the numbers. Did anyone find a song that worked for their number or did the pattern of their feet on the grid help? Everyone should be congratulated on trying to remember their phone numbers.

Safety

All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.

People could learn their phone number by one or two numbers at a time and add on the next number only when they’re feeling confident. Once they’re confident, they could try jumping the numbers at speed.

If jumping doesn’t work for anyone, they could move another way, choose a helper to jump for them, or use a grid drawn on paper they can point at.

All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.

Everyone could learn their address to work towards their My Skills Challenge Award.