Snow Day

Today was a snow day, so I got to work at the daycare instead.

Team Building and Engagement
Before lunch time, I had to gather my ten school-aged children for a group game that would not be too distracting while the preschoolers ate their lunches. The children did not want to play bingo, so I went in to the game closet while another teacher watched the children. I bought out a few games, but I decided to use the paper flower pots that we did not use last summer. I separated the children into two groups in which I tried to balance by age and family membership. I had a nearly even amount of kindergartners and first graders on each team, I also separated the two sets of brothers. I introduced the challenge to see who could build the tallest tower. At first, the older children resisted the game, but after two minutes, they were getting very competitive. The younger children kept knocking down the towers by accident or had trouble balancing the flower pots, so I allowed all of the kindergartners to join a team of their own. I used yarn to measure the towers, which showed that you could measure with anything. The older children (now on teams of 2) became very competitive where as the younger team decided that they just wanted to build for fun. I had the teams go without talking for two minutes. The children did not want to clean up for lunch because they were so engaged with the activity.

If I ever have a class that needs to work on team work, I would love to incorporate this activity while I am teaching a standard that can tie into it. This activity can also fit into Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs because students needs to feel safe and that they belong in order to learn.