Blind Artists is a fun (and noisy) way to get the class talking. It’s good as a short activity at the end of a lesson or as a longer activity.

Props

Two blindfolds; ideal are the masks from long-haul airplane journeys but a scarf will do.

Blackboard and 2 markers.

Pre-Teaching

Make sure the students are familiar with giving instructions.

• go up, go right, go left
• further down, over to your right

This game is good for body parts so perhaps a quick revision of those will help.

Playing the Game

Start by splitting the class into two teams, left and right. Then draw a line down the middle of the blackboard.

One team works on the right, one on the left.

Now, call up one good student from each team and hand each a board marker. Tell them they must draw a face on the board which they will do.

Now erase the face and tell them to draw it again, but this time they will be blindfolded and their teammates will be giving them instructions!

Blindfold the students and then get their teammates to call out instructions. The students at the front will have to concentrate and listen carefully and with two teams shouting instructions (this game can get loud) it’s not that easy!

When both faces are drawn, the students can take off the blindfold. Now bring up two more students, blindfold them and they must draw the torso. Then two more for the arms. And two more for the legs…

Variations on a Theme

How detailed you want to go is your decision but this game can be great fun when students have to put on buttons or perhaps add color to a belt or something like this.

Also don’t just keep with body parts. You can extend this to other semantic fields:

• an adult class can draw a car bit by bit
• draw a house

Also you can bring in a large poster of almost anything and have the students copy it – blindfolded of course!