Play The Evolution Game
Before you begin
- Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
- Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers.
Rock, paper, scissors
- Explain how to play ‘rock, paper, scissors’.
- In rock, paper, scissors, two people count down from three and show either: a rock (by making their hand into a fist) paper (by showing the palm of their hand) or scissors (by using their first two fingers like a peace sign). Tell everyone that rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper and paper beats rock.
- Now it’s a good idea to agree how you’ll count down from three: will you show your hand on the number one or on the word go?
Start evolving
- Everyone should spread out around the space.
- In the game of evolution, everyone starts as an egg. Eggs should squat down on the floor and wrap their arms around their legs to make an egg shape. Everyone should shuffle around until they meet another egg.
- When someone meets another egg, they should play a game of rock, paper, scissors. The winner should evolve into a chicken and the other player should stay as an egg and find another egg to duel.
- The chicken should move around bent over, with their arms flapping like a chicken’s wings. They can add sound effects too!
- The chickens should move around the space until they find another chicken, then they should play another game of rock, paper, scissors. This time, the winner should evolve into a dinosaur. The losing player should turn back into an egg.
- The dinosaurs should stand up tall and stomp around with their arms tucked into their chest like a T. rex, until they meet another dinosaur.
- When two dinosaurs meet, they should play another game. The winner should evolve into a king or queen. The losing player should turn back into a chicken.
- Kings or queens should walk around the space waving like a king or queen until they meet another king or queen. The winner of this game should move to the side of the space – they’ve won! The losing player should evolve back into a dinosaur.
- Everyone should keep playing until there are no more games to be played. At this point there’s usually one egg, one chicken, one dinosaur and one king or queen left.
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.
- 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. Take a look at our guidance on running active games safely.
To make it more of a challenge, you could ask everyone to go back to being an egg each time they lose a game.
For a quicker round, set a time limit and see how many people can evolve.
You could add different characters, such as a gorilla or a bear, to extend the chain and make the game last longer.
Think about how everyone moves around the space and the actions they've to perform. You could change the characters and movements to suit your group.
All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.
You could play this game in any setting - why not try playing it while on the water.
Why not ask the group to invent their own evolution chain and come up with their own characters and actions for each stage?