3 (Free) Get To Know You Social Activities

It feels like I’m always searching for fun social games and activities that are great for getting to know new people or getting to know familiar people even better. I’m constantly reaching for these types of activities in my therapy groups!

So, today I wanted to share 3 of my favorites with you!

At the bottom of this post, you can snag the 3 printables for free (by signing up for my email newsletter!), but you can do these 3 activities with no materials as well!

So without further ado, here’s 3 of my favorite social games:

1. Info Dump 🚚

Info Dump is a fun game for all children! Everyone loves talking about their favorite things, so it can be a particularly good game for students who want to learn more about one another. I absolutely love playing this game with children I work with as it allows me to get to know them and their interests so much better. It often elicits a great language sample too 😉

Here’s how you play: Everyone in the group brainstorms a few topics they love/know a lot about/enjoy talking about.

Then, they outline, organize, write, and plan what they want to share to the group about that topic.

I set a timer for a certain amount of time (e.g., 2 minutes) and each child gets to share about their chosen topic for that amount of time.

It’s great practice for everybody in the group to learn how to hear, respect, and support every member in their group while giving each group member dedicated time to share about something they love and feel seen and heard. It’s a win-win and usually a huge hit in therapy.

Between brainstorming, planning, and sharing, this activity can take a couple of sessions.

2. Peak and Pit ⛰️

This is a great game you could even play each week in therapy as a check-in. I use this game to share highs and lows – from the past week, from over the summer, from the school year so far, from the week, etc…

To play, I often start by having everyone visualize a big, tall mountain. We imagine being on the top of the mountain – happy, tall, and proud!

Then, we share the top/best/peak part of the week, and our valley/worst part of the week.

3. Two Truths and a Lie 🤥

In my opinion, this game is best for older students. It’s perfect for learning more about one another and also to target skills like social communication, inferencing,

To play, have each person in the room list 3 things about themselves – but only 2 are true! Go around the room and have each person present their list, one at a time. It’s the group’s job to identify which fact is the lie!

One element I like to add in is that afterwards, we discuss whether the lie was too obvious. Did it trick anybody? Why or why not?

To snag all 3 of these printables shown above, you can sign up for my email newsletter here:

I hope these ideas are helpful for both you and your students!

To learn more about social communication (including example therapy goals!), click here.