Being an education in Beauty and hair for over 10 years, I have many new starters with our role on role off courses. Our Students join group classes and 90% of the time do not know each other. What they don’t know is they are about to embark onto a journey together, starting out in the industry and can become friends for life. Use these ice breakers for hair or beauty lessons to build a great relationship with your students from the start.

Who am I? Yes the game that you play at parties with the yellow Post-it notes. We select a topic either hair or beauty related. These can be either companies, brand houses, famous nail techs, magazine names, celebrity make up artists or even someone that they have read about in the past. This is a great way to stay on topic. It also give the tutor an insight into what the students already know about the industry and people they really aspire to be.

Birthday line up; it’s party time. Great for a larger group of people and if you have enough room. Set a task to the students to order themselves in a line from first birthday through the year to the end. It’s something that they can share personal information (if they wish to) and also feel like they can share common knowledge between each other. A student may have an extremely memorable brain and can realise when it’s somebody’s birthday coming up.

Two truths and a lie: one of my favourites, let’s play detective. In this icebreaker you get each student to tell two truths and one lie about themselves. This is great for smaller groups and can take around 10 minutes. Using this icebreaker in a beauty group can really bond a group over some personal information, some lies they can really think outside the box. It can be a pet‘s name, something about their personality or even where they are from. Even what they wear or where they shop, try not to overthink it too much, that’s where it’s obvious it’s a lie!

Icebreakers can be a great introduction into the group and even be used when a new student enters onto a current group to make that person feel more welcome.

Id always advice you join in too, its great to let them now your a real person! You can be fun and not just their tutor, but this can open ways to build trust between you and your students. Give examples of your own if using icebreakers such as Two Truths and A Lie.

Ice breakers are taught on our VTCT Level 3 Award in Education.

Let me know how you get on when you use an icebreaker in your group class in our private Facebook group, introduce yourself!