1. Form a circle, including yourself.
2. Challenge your group to record the fastest contagious smile ever!
3. By way of demonstration, start your stopwatch and pass a big smile as you make eye contact with someone across the circle from you.
4. Once this person smiles at you, start gently jumping up and down to indicate that the first smile has been sent.
5. The person who received your smile, now passes a smile to a new person in the circle.
6. The process of passing smiles continues until everyone in the circle has received a smile and passed a smile.
7. When everyone is jumping on the spot, stop the time.
8. Play for two or more rounds attempting to record the fastest contagious smile ever.

Video Transcript for Super Smile Group Game
presented by Nate Folan

A smile is as contagious as a yawn. That moment that someone smiles at you, often times what do you do?

(Smile back.)

Smile back. Now certainly there’s moments where someone may not smile back at you or you may not smile back at them, but generally most people are going to smile back, and that’s what this activity is about.

What’s going to happen is I’m going to start and we’re going to try to create a pattern where everyone is involved and for now we’re just going to establish that pattern as we go, and more so it’s about being inclusive.

I’m going to start. I’m simply going to look at someone, I’m not going to call their name or anything. I’m just simply going to smile. Hopefully they acknowledge that. The way that I can acknowledge that they’ve acknowledged the smile that I’m sending is they’ll smile. Once they smile I start jumping, and I’ll continue jumping until the entire group is smiling and jumping.

Because what will happen here is let’s say I send a smile to Britney, right? So I’m going to smile, and you can cheese up your smile. You can be cheesy, you can be authentic, whatever it might be. You might have to do both, whatever, but I’m going to send a smile to Britney, right? So I’m looking up and I smile at Britney and I’m waiting until Britney smiles.

(Britney jumps)

Yeah, so in here… you think, you’re like I’m so happy, they’re smiling at me. This also takes a little bit of self-control because I’m going to smile at Britney, the first thing that Britney does is smiles. Once Britney smiles I’m jumping like this, so Britney then will send your smile to someone else. I’m going to continue jumping.

Nice. Britney and I are now jumping. You’re going to send your smile. Now we’re jumping.

(people smiling and jumping in Super Smile group game)

Are we all jumping here?

(I think so.)

Are we all smiling? Your calves burning a little bit? You can relax.

And as this gets established the goal here is to get that smile sent around the group as fast as possible.

So how do we go from not smiling to smiling as quick as you can and granted a lot of us are already smiling in that regard and jumping. Bring it like that. I’ll ask you to just hold your face however you want. If you want to bring the Dudley face go for it. Serious, please. Otherwise just waiting for that but again trying to send it around.

It does not need to be the same pattern. The goal here though is that everyone’s included and we send it from my start to the last person as fast as we can. So I’ll ask if someone in the group could actually time this for us. Does anyone have a timepiece?

So a little bit of a timed version here. Ready? On your mark, I’m going to start, get set, go.

(people smiling and jumping in Super Smile group game)

Everyone? Good.

(Forty-five seconds.)

Forty-five seconds.

(Do you want me to time this part?)

Yeah, just to say we got forty-five seconds. Let’s see if we can go through this pattern quicker, see what happens.

(Are we jumping?)

Jumping this time, yes. Here we go. Ready?

(people smiling and jumping in Super Smile group game)

Begin by asking your group to form a circle, and include yourself, because this super smile group game is too fun to stand away from.

Explain that in a few moments, you will start time on a stopwatch (optional) and then immediately pull a huge smile on your face, making eye contact with someone on the other side of the circle.

Once the receiver (of your smile) makes eye contact with you and smiles back, explain that you will then start to gently jump up and down in place to indicate that the first smile has been sent.

Now, the receiver of the first smile is invited to quickly send a smile to someone else who is standing (still) in the circle, and so the process of passing smiles continues.

Note, everyone may send only one smile and receive one smile, and the sender can only start jumping up and down once the receiver has made eye contact and smiled back.

Once everyone has successfully sent a smile and the entire group is jumping up and down, you can stop the stopwatch.

Play for two or more rounds attempting to record the fastest contagious smile ever. See how quickly you can send the secret smile, and enjoy the laughter! Either way, don’t take it too seriously.

Carefully consider your sequence before launching into this fun group game. Your group needs a certain level of mental-preparedness to smile willing and to look one another in the eyes for fun.

Naturally, the more enthusiasm and energy you inject into your presentation, the more your group will come along for the ride.

Emphasise the necessity of clearly looking at one person across the circle. Backlight, too large a circle or simply poor vision, can make it difficult to know who is being smiled at or not.

This group game can help to build social-emotional awareness and lead to a reflection about what makes us smile and why smiles are healthy and important in a community. Questions such as How does it feel to smile? and What does it feel like when someone smiles at you? are great conversation starters.

Allow participants to fake a smile if necessary. In my experience, fake smiles are very likely to become real. Besides, research supports the fact that there are as many benefits to smiling whether it is a genuine smile or fake!

You could integrate Super Smile as part of a well-designed SEL program to promote and maintain healthy and supportive relationships, not to mention, enjoy a generous burst of laughter.

Specifically, this activity offers opportunities to explore and practice the following social & interpersonal skills:

Self-Awareness

• Identifying Emotions
• Experiencing Self-Efficacy

Self-Management

• Controlling One’s Emotions
• Demonstrating Self-Discipline & Self-Motivation

Social Awareness

• Demonstrating Empathy & Compassion
• Understanding & Expressing Gratitude
• Appreciating Diversity
• Respecting Others

Relationship Skills

• Communicate & Listen Effectively
• Build Positive Relationships
• Work Collaboratively

Responsible Decision-Making

• Demonstrating Curiosity & Open-Mindedness
• Anticipating & Evaluating the Consequences of One’s Actions
• Promoting Personal & Collective Well-Being

You can learn more about SEL and how it can support character education here.

There is no specific health & wellness perspective to this activity other than promoting the benefits to one’s well-being of enjoying a good laugh.

In a small way, you could explore certain emotional intelligence competencies insofar as they relate to the impact of changing a person’s outward appearance with a smile and how this can affect their mood, etc.

If you can think of more explicit ways in which Super Smile could be purposefully integrated into a health and wellness program, please leave a comment at the base of this page.

• New Sequence: As above, but create a new sequence (of passed smiles) with each round, ie each person consciously sends their smile to a new person.
• Unhappy to Happy: Start the game by asking everyone to make their most unhappy facial expression until the super-smile reaches them.
• Continuous Smiles: Add a rule that if someone stops smiling, he or she must stop jumping until someone sends them a smile again. This will certainly impact the time, but may also increase the likelihood of belly laughs.
• Don’t Smile: Take a look at If You Love Me, Honey, Smile to experience the very antithesis of this game.

Smiles are simply a way to put ourselves and each other at ease. We are going to test the theory that, like yawns, smiles are contagious. We will see how quickly a smile can travel to everyone in our group…

Did you know that it takes a lot less effort in terms of muscles to smile than it does to frown? Let’s test that theory – all frown for me for a few moments [allow time for frowns.] Okay, now try a big smile [allow time for smiling.] You can actually feel a lot more facial muscles at work when you frown. So, as this next exercise will focus on smiling, I’m actually asking you to do a lot less work than otherwise…

Coupled with one or more reflection strategies, here are some sample questions you could use to process your group’s experience after playing this fun energiser game:

• Was this exercise difficult? Why?
• Did you make any mistakes or errors? What was your response, or that of the group?
• What was required of you and the group to continuously improve your time?
• How contagious is a smile in real life?
• Why does a smile matter?

Playful Interactive Session

What You Need:
12+ people, 30 mins

• Making Connections – simple icebreakers to connect group members
• Bumpity Bump Bump Bump – fast-paced & interactive name game
• Super Smile – active circle game that generates lots of smiles & laughter

Fun ‘Icebreaker’ Session for Established Groups

What You Need:
12+ people, 60 mins, deck of We Connect Cards

• Categories – series of fun group-splitting exercises to celebrate diversity
• Psychic Handshake – interactive handshaking exercise to create random teams
• We Connect Cards – series of fun partner & small group sharing exercises
• Ro Sham Bo – super-fun adaptation of the popular ‘rock-paper-scissors’ game
• Super Smile – active circle game that generates lots of smiles & laughter