Imagine That Activity

any item you want to use - a brick, paper towel roll, a banana, pop can, chair

This is simply an activity to stretch the imagination. It can be run as a competition between groups or individuals or as a cooperative exercise.

Stand in front of the group and show them the item. Tell them their task is to come up with as many 'real' uses as possible for the item. By 'real', I mean you couldn't use a brick as a purse, but you could use it as ballast in a hot air balloon. You may need judges to dictate acceptability, but the group usually handles that.

If this is an individual challenge, have each scout write their ideas down and then go around identifying all the unique ones and awarding points for each.

If you challenge the group to come up with 20 or 40 uses, then have them shout out while you write them on a whiteboard.

If its a challenge between groups, give them 5 minutes to brainstorm and write down ideas and award points only for those the other team does not have. Or, alternately call for an answer from each team, awarding higher points for answers that are given as the number of ideas gets bigger.

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For example, a brick could be used as a nut cracker, a dumbbell, a ruler, a step, an anchor.