We often discuss the concept of team building with respect to the corporate world. We talk about fostering a team spirit and helping employees overcome their weaknesses and enhance their strengths. We often discuss team building activities as a part of a team manager's responsibilities, but don't you think these activities need to be incorporated in teachers' responsibilities as well? Isn't it necessary to teach young children to be team players? Isn't it important for them to possess interpersonal and social skills? Social skills play a vital role in a person's life. It is important to develop interpersonal intelligence in children, and it should be done during the school years.
Film making or skit making can be an interesting team building activity at school. For this, you need to divide the students into groups of eight or ten. Give each group a topic that they can weave a story around. Ask them to build a scene around it and enact it in the form of a skit. Depending on the time you can allot for the game, decide the topics. This game encourages the students to think collectively and be team players. It helps the children improve their planning and presentation skills.
On similar lines, you can organize a cooking day in class wherein each of the teams is asked to cook a food item and given the ingredients needed for the recipe. This activity needs the kids to work in a team and think and act as one. It needs effective division of work to finish the activity in time. Again, choose the recipes depending on the time allotted for them and also the students' age.
Guide Me is another good team building game for schools. This is an outdoor team game that needs you to divide the students into two teams. Each team chooses one member to be blindfolded and guided along a path. Lay some objects on the way that the blindfolded person is to walk on. The team members of the blindfolded person need to guide him efficiently along the pre-determined pathway. They have to guide him in such a way that he manages to skip all the objects laid on the way. This game is helpful in developing communication skills and organized thinking in children.
Another game that can be a good choice at school is Line-up. For this game, you need to divide the children into two teams. Let the teams choose their own leaders. Now, pose challenges before the team such as asking them to stand in the ascending order of their birthdays, descending order of their heights, or in alphabetical order of their names. You can also ask each team to quickly make a formation, for example, ask them to stand in a circle or in the shape of the figure 8, or in the shape of the letter G or other such forms. The team which completes first, is the winner. This activity helps in developing organizing skills and leadership qualities in children.
Find Who is another team building game for school kids. Each child is given a different set of 'find who' questions and the whole group is allotted a certain time to answer all of them. To find answers to the questions, the children should have to interact with each other. You could have questions like 'find a member who sings well', 'find someone who hates reading', 'find a member who has two siblings', or something like 'find a member who has traveled abroad'. You could include questions like finding classmates whose birthdays fall in a particular month or who have read a particular book or watch a particular TV show, etc. This game allows the kids to communicate with one another and also know each other better. This activity promotes team building in the sense that it gives the kids a chance to mingle.
Both outdoor team games and indoor team building activities prove to be some of the best options for team games at school. Pick any one of these and the students of your class are sure to have fun playing them. These games are not just enjoyable but also educative in their own way.
