Scrabinoes can also be used as a group-building game!
I was asked to develop our local community’s program for the 1st day of Ridvan. I had just finished writing up instructions for some new variations on how to play with our new Scrabinoes cards, and a completely different idea came to me. Here’s what I did.
I put a deck of Scrabinoes cards in a basket, and had each person attending the Ridvan celebration pick one card. Scrabinoes cards have quotations on them with special words highlighted in color. Then I asked them to arrange themselves in a big circle in such a way that the card held by the person on either side of them had a colored word in common with the card they held. They only had to match one word, and the people on either side didn’t have to have the same word. We also ignored the idea of points for this activity.
Forming a complete circle with interconnected quotations took a little time , some consultation, and a lot of rearranging, but we did it!
Then I read the line from the new Ridvan prayer that says:
“Bind, then, their souls and spirits together, that through their unity all the inhabitants of Thy dominion may become united.”
I said that the words that we shared with the person beside us “bound us together.” Then we went around the circle and said how we were bound to each other. For example “I am bound to Susan by ‘Spirit’ and to Eric by ‘Love.'” Then we read our quotation. Because the most common words on the cards are “God, Love, Spirit & Heart,” saying out loud that we were bound to each other by these words created a very positive atmosphere that was carried through to the rest of the evening.
Click here and click on the “Instructions” tab for more suggestions on how to organize this activity.
If you order today, live in the US, and choose “Priority” or “Flat-Rate” shipping instead of 1st class, you should receive your order by Wednesday.
Of course, you can also turn your Ridvan celebration into a games & activities night, and play regular Scrabinoes, test your knowledge of quotations with Flash of Inspiration Flash Cards, break out our Quintessence playing cards, coloring books, activities books or word puzzle books, or even play Life Dice to get to know each other better. All of these are listed on our games and activities pages.
Note that this picture is to show how cards are connected by common words. We did not use points for this activity… BUT for a more challenging version, you could have people form a circle and calculate how many points the group earned based on the point value of the words that people beside each other had in common. Then challenge the group to rearrange itself to generate the most points possible given the cards in people’s hands.