Icebreakers 2

Annette Green, Modi’in, Israel

Annette shares her favourite easy-to-use icebreakers to get a meeting off to a warm and friendly start.

Short icebreaker questions or activities can help mothers get to know each other, make them feel more comfortable, help you to know them better and find out their challenges. Simply put, they can be a fun way to start a meeting! The Leader can go first to set the tone and give mothers time to think of an answer.

One Word

What’s the one word you would use to describe yourself?
After choosing a word that best describes themselves, each mother is referred to by that name throughout the meeting. This helps everyone get to know one another a bit better in a light-hearted way.

If this sounds too challenging, you can ask mothers to choose an adjective to describe themselves along with their name, they could use alliteration if you want to increase the challenge for example Calm Caitlyn, Silly Susan, etc.

Skill Set

What skill or talent would you like to develop?
Being a mother involves learning and using different skills compared with those we might use in other areas of our lives. Asking which skill or talent each mother would like to develop further shares a little more about them.

Questions on Coloured Paper

Choose a question!
Have a bag of slips of coloured paper, colourful paper clips, crayons, etc. You will want to be aware of any potential choking hazard if toddlers are around. If you have five different themes, then prepare five questions to correspond to each colour.

Each mother randomly chooses a colourful paper/crayon/paper clip and answers a specific question about themselves. You can have some fun figuring out what the questions are.

Here are some examples:

What did you eat for breakfast today?
What is your favourite breastfeeding position?
What is the best breastfeeding tip you ever received?
What is the worst mothering advice you ever received?
How did you find out about La Leche League?
If you could only own one book, what would it be?
What is your favourite dish to cook?
How did you choose your baby’s name?

Desert Island Picks

If you were stranded on a desert island what one baby item would you have with you and why?

Theme Songs

Do you have a theme song?
Ask each mother to choose a movie or song that matches their current mood. Are they feeling playful, comic, dramatic—they choose the movie that matches their mood as a way of sharing how they feel. Ask them to explain why they chose that movie or song.

Favourite Book or Character

What’s your favourite children’s book or movie character?
Ask each mother to choose their favourite children’s book or movie character and explain why they chose them.