Poison Dart Frog

Keith Sobus ยท

This game requires goofy students, and someone enthusiastic to explain it to them.  It's also a ton of fun.

How to Play:

Have the students sit in a circle. Choose one student to sit in the middle. Have everyone close their eyes. Then have a leader anonymously tap 1 or 2 students (depending on how big your group is) on the head. They will be the poison dart frog(s), and their job is to secretly kill other people sitting in the circle. The person in the middle will be spending the game trying to figure out who they are. The poison dart frogs "kill" people by doing two things:

1) Making eye contact with the person and

2) Quickly sticking their tongue out at them

Tell everyone they can open their eyes and explain the rules:

1) You must at all times look around at people in the circle in the eyes (otherwise the poison dart frogs won't be able to kill people).

Pro Tips:

  1. It's not a fun game unless people make it fun. Dying dramatically is what makes it. Encourage students to die dramatically.
  2. Don't play for too long. Leave students wanting more. This game can become overplayed rather quickly.  
  3. Prep your leaders beforehand so they know the importance of dying dramatically themselves.
  4. When we play and the poison dart frog kills someone, we have that student place their arms in an "x" across their chest after they die dramatically so the poison dart frog can remember who is already "dead".

2) If the poison dart frog sticks out their tongue at you, you must wait a couple seconds and then die, dramatically. (feel free at this point in time to demonstrate for them with some nasty hacking noises, a shrill scream, or whatever other weird noises you can muster up).  Make sure to really emphasize this point as it is what makes the game fun.

3) If you happen to see the poison dart frog stick out their tongue and kill someone else, do not shout out who they are and identify them.  Only the person sitting in the middle can make a guess.

4) The person in the middle has 3 guesses to correctly identify the poison dart frog(s). (You can decrease the number of guesses if you have a small group playing). If they fail to find them, the game is over and the poison dart frogs win.