Active Participation: Fun Games and Challenges

This fun challenge exercises both your mind and your body! You will need a partner to help you, but anyone of any age can play. You just need to know your colours, or you can make up other topics (see “variations” for more ideas to play).

Image of a variety of colourful post-it notes.

Challenge adapted from #DPAEveryday, and ThinkWink_PhyEd (Click to see the game in action!).

What you will need:

  • 5-10 pieces of coloured paper, “post-its”, or white paper that you colour on with markers, crayons or paint. You can also write the names of the colours on any paper you have around your home. Scrap or recycled paper works perfectly!
  • A wall to tape or post the papers up on.

Challenge #1 (Getting Started Warm-Up)

  1. Tape the papers up on a wall in a random order, not too far apart.
  2. Have someone call out the different colours.
  3. Tap the colour you hear them say.
  4. Continue having them call colours for a minute, or as long as you are having fun tapping!

Challenge #2 (Adding in the fitness moves)

  1. Add in a fitness move/exercise that you like (e.g., jumping jacks, squats, running on the spot).
  2. Using the same coloured papers, have someone call out colours.
  3. Do the fitness move (e.g., jumping jacks) until you hear the person call the colour that you need to tap.
  4. Be sure the person calling the colours, doesn’t go too fast, or you won’t be able to do the fitness move in between. Continue for a minute or two and then switch caller and “tapper”.

Challenge #3 (Adding a colour combination)

  1. The rules are the same as in Challenge #2, except the caller, calls 3 colours for you to tap in a row, and in between each combination of colours that are called, you do an exercise (e.g. running on the spot). Example, the caller might say red, yellow, green and you tap those three colours then go back to running on the spot, until they call another three colours. Continue until you are feeling tired.

Challenge #4 (Brain challenge)

  1. This challenge requires coloured paper.
  2. Challenge your brain by writing the name of a colour that DOES NOT match the colour of the paper (e.g, on the blue paper write the word “yellow”), then tap the “word” colour the caller says and NOT the paper colour.
  3. It is tricky and makes for a lot of laughs!. Sound easy? Try having the caller call out the colours faster, or tap the coloured paper and not the written word. Which way is easier?
  4. Don’t forget to continue doing some kind of exercise in between tapping the colours!

Variations:

  • You could have coloured objects on the floor (e.g. stuffed toys, coloured blocks) that you need to bend to tap, or run to tap.
  • You could have magazine pictures up on the wall, and call out the pictures you see to tap.
  • Every time the caller calls out a colour, change the exercise you do, as well.