Last year I read an ALSC Blog post by Tanya DiMaggio about Team Building in Virtual Times. (FEELS SO GOOD TO SAY LAST YEAR! SUCK IT 2020!) Inspired by Tanya’s suggestions for adapting icebreaker activities and games, I created a Colorbrain: KidLit Characters Virtual Edition for our youth services end of year department party!
The original Colorbrain is a fun quiz-style game. Players have 11 color cards, which they use to answer 300 questions. The object of the game is to work out which of the color card(s) in your hand correctly answer the question… such as, what color are Dorothy’s shoes?
Colorbrain even has handy dandy adapted virtual gameplay instructions! I further modified these instructions so we could play as teams in Zoom breakout rooms; I also gave everyone points for each color they correctly identified in only partially correct answers (instead of discarding the entire answer, as per the original scoring rules). We added some house rules, too, like no consulting professional or home libraries! 😉
Game Rules Slide
I prepared 20 questions for teams to answer throughout three 5-minute rounds. I shared the question slides on my screen and verbally read the questions aloud. (I meant to also post the questions into the chat, but I forgot!) Folks copied the questions before I opened our breakout rooms and randomly assigned individuals. Our first round focused on five “bear-y” familiar characters:
Round 1 Questions Slide: Winnie the Pooh’s Shirt, Corduroy’s Overalls, Paddington’s Coat, Papa Bear’s Overalls, and Sister Bear’s Outfit
During our first Round, teams appointed a captain and came up with a team name in addition to answering the questions. When we came back into the main room, the team captains presented answers to each question by holding up their color cards. (Prior to our virtual party, I had given everyone color cards cut from cardstock along with their invitations). I started off by saying “Show your colors!” but that made me feel like a pirate, so I started counting down instead. 🤣
Since Zoom remembers your breakout room settings, it was super easy to send teams off to Round Two. Round Two focused on “classic” characters (such as Elmer the Elephant and Waldo’s Shirt). Round Three introduced more modern characters (such as Olivia’s Outfit and Pete’s NEW shoes).
We had a two-way tie at the end of Round Three and had to go into a lightning round! I gave the teams 60 seconds to answer 3 additional questions. After that… we still had a two-way tie! My teammates are just too brilliant.
What new ways have you found to have fun and celebrate each other during these strange days? Would love to learn more in the comments below!
Storytime in the Stacks 
We held two end of year virtual celebration opportunities for our branch staff. The first was a virtual paint & sip and the second was a Taskmaster style event. (If you have never watched Taskmaster GO DO IT) For Taskmaster, we gave those participating a variety of challenges both in advance and live. My favorite ended up being recreate a movie scene using only food because one of our wranglers recreated the bloody elevator scene from The Shining using gingerbread and tomato juice!
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That sounds SO FUN! Was the Paint and Sip open-ended or was there a theme?
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