Have you ever heard of the game Hullabaloo? It’s from the same makers of Cranium and it’s a lot of fun for very young children. The game consists of differently colored/shaped pads placed on the floor that the children are told to move to according to audio instructions. So they would hear things like “Spin to a circle!” or “Put your elbow on red!”. After a couple of these are said, suddenly the voice yells “FREEZE!”. Then, an animal name is called out. On each of the pads is also an animal picture and whoever is on the animal that was called out wins that round.
The original game, which is hard to find nowadays, is already great practice for shapes, colors, easy verbs, body parts, and animals. But I remember it not from my childhood, but from when I was much older, playing this as a drinking game.
The simplest version of drunk Hullabaloo is that the losers drink. If you want to make this more ESL friendly, replace “drink” with “recite/answer something in English”.
The more difficult version is one where under each pad is an instruction. It’s usually a dare of some kind that you MUST do or else you drink. Once again, replace the word “drink” for something more school friendly. I recommend only doing this version with a small, more advanced class. You can even play this with adults, provided they are a class of people who enjoy those types of games. Honestly, the most fun group of people to play this with are teenagers because they may be too shy/aloof to do some actions at first but they will get really into it after awhile. Just remind them that sharing a pad is okay, but pushing others off a pad is not.
Ideas for Dares
Here are some simple dares for your classroom that you can use both in Hullabaloo and in any other dare game.
- Sing the alphabet song
- Do your best impression of the teacher
- Spell a word you teacher gives you out loud
- Skip around the classroom
- Do 10 push ups/squats/jumping jacks
- Dance!
- Sing!
- Repeat “Sally sells seashells by the sea shore” three times fast
Free Downloads
If you have a hard time finding the original game or getting it sent to wherever you live, you can download my version. You should laminate the pads after printing them out as the kids will ruin normal paper with their feet while playing the game.
There is no audio CD in this version so you will have to say the instructions yourself, but that’s good because you can control the class better that way. Even better, you can have the student who won do the instructions for the next round.
And just for fun I’ve created some different versions so more advanced students can practice more advance vocabulary.
And finally here are two Hullabaloo printable pdfs with no art or words on them. They are so you can fill it with whatever you want yourself.