Fruit Salad (ENERGIZER)

Time

10 minutes

Description

This fun energizer gets people up and moving in a mad dash to grab an available chair.  It works well to increase the energy in the room, and it could also be used to randomly sort participants into new groups.  Use the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control instead of normal fruits to reinforce a message on the Fruits of the Spirit.

 

Scripture

• Galatians 5:22-23

 

Materials

• Chairs – one per participant at the beginning
• Flipchart and markers (Optional)

Preparation

• None

 

Procedure

Use the following procedure:

• Have all the participants sit in a circle of chairs. If necessary, they should bring their chairs with them from the tables back to an open area.
• Ask the first FOUR participants for their favorite kind of fruit. They cannot repeat a fruit.  If someone says their favorite fruit has been mentioned, prompt them to give their second favorite kind of fruit.  (You may want to flipchart the fruits so that participants don’t forget them.)
• For example, participant #1 may say apple, #2 says orange, #3 says kiwi, and #4 says mango. (Alternative: If you have a large group, you can also use the Fruit of the Spirit – Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-Control.)
• Once all the fruits have been named, go around the rest of the participants, assigning them a fruit in the same order, e.g., apple, orange, kiwi, mango.
• Make sure all participants are assigned one of the four fruits.
• Then tell participants that you are going to announce a fruit, and all the people who were assigned that fruit have to stand up and switch chairs.
• Tell them that while they are up, you will take one of these chairs out of the circle.
• The person that is left standing must then announce a new fruit.
• At any time, a person in the middle can say “Fruit Salad,” and it will force everyone to switch chairs.
• Answer any questions participants might have.
• Then, begin a round. Play several rounds.
• If you are using the activity to randomly sort participants, have them number off the number of groups you want after the final round. Then have all “ones” get together, all “twos” get together, and so on.