Have in Common

Step by Step

1. Get a box and encourage young people to write how they are feeling. For example, “I feel anxious every time I have something to say at a meeting.” Or “I feel lonely when I go home and have no one to talk to.”
2. Play “The Sun Shines On”. Have your group sat in a large circle with everyone but yourself sat on chairs. The objective is to always have a seat to sit on. Though this is the task, there will never be enough seats for everyone to be sat down at once – hence there will always be some stood in the middle. To get out of the middle, the person left stood up at the end of the round must say: “The sun shines on… (Topic).” The topic the person chooses can be anything that the person in the middle thinks will get the most people out of their chairs. Some good examples are: “The sun shines on: all the people wearing red, all the boys/girls in the room, everyone who supports… etc.”
   Once the person has said this, everyone who this statement mentions must now get up and find a new seat. It helps to tell them that they can’t sit in their own seat or either seat on their left and right. For safety reasons, it also helps to give them the rule of no running but speedy walking as this helps to prevent slips or shoving.
3. Start by identifying physical traits or likes and dislikes then take suggestions from the box and/or ask people to come up with shared feelings and pull out some of the papers from the box and read as the topic.
4. Discuss how it felt for people to find out that they have things in common with each other.