Equipment/Resources
- Box or Container
- Paint, crayons, pencils, construction paper etc.… (for decorating)
- 5 or more miscellaneous items of choice. Such as, a teddy bear, a headband, a marker and anything in between!
- Paper and pencils (for variation)
How to play:
- First, assemble your imagination machine! Using a box or container and art supplies. Decorate your machine any way you like. Add stickers as buttons, pipe cleaners as cranks and draw on all of your favourite shapes.
- Now, choose your items to fill the box. You can use almost anything for this game (teddy bear, headband, markers, utensils)
- Gather your players in circle and introduce the imagination machine! Show everyone how it works transforming everyday objects into something new and imaginative.
- Each player will have a chance to stick their hand in the machine and pull out an object. Players can rename the object they take out of the machine and use their imagination to create its new use. The only rule is : you cannot call the object by its true name!
For example:
Encourage each player to be as imaginative as possible!
If the player pulls a teddy bear from the imagination machine, they must then decide what the new name is and how it is used.
They might say: “Wow I pulled out a Gobble monster. Did you know that these are used for Cleaning your room when you are too tired”
This game can be played with any object and participants can take turns adding new objects to the machine and pushing buttons and making sounds to make the objects “transform”.
Variations
Make it harder:
- Use a pencil and paper to write out theme words. When the player chooses an object from the imagination machine, they must also choose a theme word.
- That word must then either be in the new name of their object or its new use.
- For example: If the object pulled was a tennis ball and the word was “Pizza” then the object could be, “A Grotopler” and “It is used to eat the topping you don’t like off pizza”.
Make it easier:
- Instead of the player thinking of a new name and use, ask them to tell the story of where the object came from.
For example:
If a player pulled a hat from the imagination machine their story could be:
“Once upon a time, this hat belonged to a secret spy. This secret spy worked for the FBI and travelled all over the world. One day when he was climbing up the Eiffel tower his hat flew into the wind and it was never seen again. Until now!”