Ice Breakers: Alphabet Soup 1

This is a great activity for any age and gets people thinking quickly. It's also somewhat "active", so if everyone needs a good stretch it gets them off their feet. If teaching ESL, it's a good exercise in vocabulary. Have participants/students divided by table or into small groups. Tell them that you're going to give them a certain amount of time (2 minutes maybe) to find an item within the room (or their immediate surroundings) that begins with each letter of the alphabet, in order. They must form a collection on their table of the items, and cannot reuse an item more than once. At the end of the time alloted, ask each team how far they got (to which letter), and then go through the alphabet asking each team what they had for each letter and to hold it up. The team that got the furthest, wins!