One Or The Other

July 8, 2020

To illuminate this period of social distancing and offer you meaningful activities, Equitas has adapted some of its activities to offer them online.

Here is the physically distant version of ‘From Saturn to Jupiter’ drawn from the ‘Building Inclusive Communities’ guide.

This activity can be facilitated in-person, in a small group, while respecting social distancing.

• Age: 3+

• Time: 10+min

• Purpose: To get to know more about each other; To experience teamwork and to think about how working together can help us achieve our goals and how everyone succeeds when we cooperate; To help individuals learn vocabulary and ways of discussing human rights.

You can download the instructions of this activity as a PDF to share it more easily:

One Or The Other

Material:

• Floor marking material – including tape, chalk, or hula hoops.


How to play:

1. Place markers on the floor 1 meter apart to signal to the participants what a safe physical distance is. This type of marker you use can be different for each type of floor you’re on. This could include tape for an indoor floor, chalk for an outdoor floor, or hula hoops for grass.

2. Explain to the children that you will give some instructions. They will have to decide which group they belong to and then act out the correct position to join their group.

3. Give them the instructions in the following way: “If you [example: have brown hair] then act like a dog; if you [example: do not have brown hair] then act like a cat”. Let the children strike the right pose.

4. Continue the game by calling out different instructions drawing on the suggestions provided below. Add some variations to the type of action they do such as asking the children to jump on 1 foot versus jumping on 2 feet, doing jumping jacks versus touching their toes, clapping versus yelling, acting like 2 different animals, or quickly sitting down versus reaching for the sky.

Suggested instructions:

  • If you ARE wearing green act like a CAT, If you are NOT wearing green act like a DOG.
  • If you like soccer act like a CAT, if you do NOT like soccer act like a DOG.
  • If you have a sister act like a cat, if you do NOT act like a dog.
  • If you like colouring act like a CAT, if you do NOT like colouring act like a DOG.
  • If you play a musical instrument act like a CAT, if you do not play a musical instrument act like a DOG.


Group Discussion:

Feel:

  1. Did you like this game? Why?
  2. How did It feel when you did the same action as most other participants? How did it feel like when did a different action to most participants?

Think:

  1. Is it fun to have firneds who are different to you? Why?
  2. What makes you feel happy in our gropu?
  3. Were there times you id not know which action to do? Why? (6-8 year olds).
  4. How do you know when you are being included or excluded? (6-8 year olds).

Act:

  1. What can we do to make sure everyone feels happy in our group?
  2. What can we do together to make sure everyone feels like they are part of the group?


Human rights education for building welcoming and inclusive spaces:

This activity uses our 3-step participatory approach to promote learning about human rights and human rights values leading to action:

  1. Children and youth participate in activities that promote learning about human rights and human rights values (e.g. inclusion, respect for diversity, responsibility).
  2. Children and youth discuss how an activity made them feel, what it made them think about, and what they can change (act) in their own attitudes and behaviours and those of their peers.
  3. Together children and youth take action to promote respect for human rights values and children’s rights, and greater understanding, acceptance and inclusion in their classrooms, school playgrounds and communities.


Creative Commons Licence


Except where otherwise noted, content in this document is licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Where material is attributed to a copyright owner other than Equitas, this material is not subject to the Creative Commons licence.

  • If you have not modified the material in anyway, use the following: Equitas – International Centre for Human Rights Education. Speaking Rights: Human Rights Education Toolkit for Youth is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
  • If you have modified, adapted or remixed the material in anyway, use the following: This work, [NAME OF YOUR PUBLICATION] is adapted from Equitas – International Centre for Human Rights Education’s Speaking Rights: Human Rights Education Toolkit for Youth used under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. [NAME OF YOUR PUBLICATION] is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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