Mining

A good excuse for some cooperative, rhythmic digging together, as well as a chance to explore a variety of rocks, stones, sand and minerals indigenous to different areas of the world - not to mention fossils!

Create a mine entrance - this could be achieved with wood pallets or a tunnel of voiles and sparkly fairy lights. Use a tunnel projection which takes you down to the bowels of the earth on a roller coaster ride. Depending on the type of mine, use coloured cloths decorated with fairy lights for the walls and cover bean bags with cloths to make boulders to sit on. Gold or silver space blankets can create a shimmer behind brown voiles on the walls.

Provide different areas in which to dig and explore - gravel, sand, earth - all with different tactile qualities and smells

·Hide gold or silver nuggets of different sizes and shapes. These can be ordinary stones sprayed gold/silver or wrapped in silver/gold foil.

Or hide sparkling coloured gemstones for participants to find. These are particularly easy to resource around Xmas and look amazing.

Add a variety of tools and containers - buckets, woks, colanders, sieves, spades, ropes, chains and pulleys. Incorporate boomwhackers as digging tools (covered in brown gaffer tape to look the same) for an upbeat rhythmic section.