10 Super-Quick Warm-Up Games

Warm-ups are important to get students into the drama mindset, but sometimes you only have a few moments to spare. When time is at a premium, get your classes started in a jiffy with these 10 super-quick warm-up games. Many of them are classics, but they’re tried and true for a reason: they’re fast, effective, fun, and they work. They can all be completed in five minutes or less. As a bonus, all these warm-ups require no props or equipment.

1. Play one of these three traditional schoolyard games with a drama class twist for a few minutes: Director Says, Director May I?, and What Time Is It, Stage Manager? All of these are great warm-up activities for active listening, following directions, quick thinking, and physical movement exercises.

2. Word-at-a-time stories are an easy way to get students’ brains working, quickly and creatively. You can play as a full class or in small groups. You can also mix it up and have students make up stories 3, 5, and 7 words at a time. To get even more students involved, have additional students act out what is being described while narrator students tell the story.

3. Warm up your voice with breathwork, consonant and vowel exercises, and tongue twisters. Remember to have students stand up straight and tall, with strong chests and shoulders back, arms uncrossed, and hands out of pockets (those last two are usually the hardest habit to break!).

4. Use rounds as a warm-up for a musical theatre or vocal class. A round is a short musical piece in which multiple voices sing the same melody but start the song at different times. When each singer gets to the end of the song, they return to the beginning and start again. Rounds challenge students to focus on their own vocal line while blending beautifully with the rest of the group.

5. The mirror game is the go-to warm-up game for mime work. Everyone knows how to play it, and there is always another layer of challenge you can add: switching partners, standing groups of four in a diamond shape, moving across the floor, passing the leadership between the partners, adding music, and more. You could even have students create their own variations of the exercise.

6. Shadows (aka Shadow Walk, Follow the Leader, or Leader & Follower) is yet another quick and classic drama class warm-up game for mime work. It’s deceptively simple but packs a punch. It teaches students about making choices, following directions, leadership, volume management, focusing, spatial awareness, and paying attention to detail. An alternative warm-up game to Shadows is Elephant Walk, which can also be done Shadow-style.

7. My go-to easy warm-up game is always Mixer. You can play with any number of students, cooperatively or competitively, and it gets students up and moving quickly. It’s great for students of any age as well; as long as they can count, they can play.

8. A speedy classic for physical theatre: students count backwards from 10 while shaking out their right hands. Repeat with left hands, right feet, and left feet. Continue the pattern, reducing your counts by one each time, until you get to 1-1-1-1. If you’re extremely crunched for time, start each count at 5.

9. Sometimes your students might be fidgety and instead of doing a physical warm-up, you want them to practice stillness. Have students take a neutral position and hold it for five seconds (use a clock with a second hand, or count aloud; blinking and breathing is always allowed). Increase the amount of stillness by five seconds at a time. Build up to 30 seconds of stillness.

10. Mindfulness exercises are also great warm-up activities that don’t require a lot of time, and are good for students’ mental health. Try calming activities like box breathing or massage chains, have students share kind things about themselves or classmates, or lead them in a visualization story. Use mindfulness warm-ups on days when your students need to focus or when they need a pick-me-up.