Fun Team Building Activities for Elementary Students: Team work and cooperation are important during the process of learning. Administration works with teachers. Teachers work together with other teachers and their students. And students work together with one another.
Not only does more learning happen when everyone works together, but it also generates more fun. Kids of same age group working together are more likely to succeed. Team work helps kids build communication skills as they talk with other students and strategize.
These skills don’t just apply to the classroom. They will continue to serve your students in their everyday lives from kindergarten to their adulthood. Incorporate more teamwork in your classroom with our Team Building Games for Elementary Students.
- Advantages of Team Building Activities for Kids
- Fun Team Building Activities for Elementary Students
- Indoor Team Building Activities for Children
- Outdoor Team Building Games for Children
- Strategic Activities for Team Building
Advantages of Team Building Activities for Kids
Team building activities are important at all stages of life, but for children, the benefits can carry them through childhood and adulthood. Team building activities for elementary students gives them the opportunity to learn how to communicate with their peers. Kids can develop important life skills such as problem solving, leadership, listening, and creative thinking.
- Problem Solving Skills: Problem-solving and strategizing are built into team activities. Since students can’t complete these exercises on their own, they have to work as a group to reach a solution.
- Communication Skills: Communication means not only knowing what to speak, it’s also important to develop listening skills in order to effectively work together.
- Creative Thinking: Team building games and activities are a great way to help students think outside of their box. By grouping students of different backgrounds and experiences, everyone is exposed to new thoughts and ideas.
- Resilience: Many team building activities can’t be finished on the first try. Having to try and try again to solve a problem builds a student’s resilience.
Fun Team Building Activities for Elementary Students
Here we are giving some of the best indoor and outdoor team building activities that are fun for children. These games are helpful for teachers to control the kids.
- Storytime
- Bingo
- Human Knot
- Cup Stacking
- Marshmallow and toothpick challenge
- Tug-of-war
- Group jump race
- Obstacle course
- Scavenger hunt
- Hidden structures
- Lego challenge
- Passing the balloon
- Fingertip Hula Hoop
- Silent line up
Indoor Team Building Activities for Children
Most of the time, you need activities that can happen inside your classroom. Even though most classrooms don’t have a lot of extra space, these fun team building activities will do the job.
This activity needs no set-up or special materials. All you need is kids.
To begin a human knot, have small groups of 5 to 10 students stand closely together in a circle. Ask them to reach their hands into the middle of the circle and randomly grab another students hand. Once all students hands are grabbed, have students untangle themselves without letting go. Giggles will ensure as the group works together to bob, weave and climb their way back out.
This simple activity only needs a hula hoop and a group of 8 students. Arrange the students in a circle and have them all hold out their hands, palms up. Place the hula hoop in the center of the circle, resting it on their fingertips. Their goal is to set the hula hoop on the ground without dropping it or hooking their fingers around it. And there is absolutely no grabbing! For added difficulty, instruct students to use only one hand or just their index fingers.
Give every student of the team an empty balloon and a piece of paper. Ask them to write simple get-to-know-you questions on their papers, like “How did you celebrate your birthday” or “How old are you”. Next, place the paper inside the balloon, blow it and pass it around. Now, ask each student to burst a balloon and answer the question.
Elementary school students will enjoy this fun team-building activity. Just give them a ball or any other object that they can juggle. In group juggling, they will learn to trust and have fun together.
Gather students, pair them into two groups, and give them a challenge to create something out of Lego blocks such as a tower, car, industry and so on.
Outdoor Team Building Games for Children
If it is a good day outside, take your students outside and enjoy some team-building activities in the sunshine.
Tug-of-war is a classic team game. Split your class into 2 teams and take a sturdy rope. Make sure that teams are equally divided so it’s fun for everybody. And before starting, survey the environment to make sure that there are no obstacles that can injure the players. Then have each team pull as hard as they can in order to bring the other team across the line or off their feet.
Rope jumping is one of the simple team building activity for elementary students to teach coordination and symmetry. All you need is a big jumping rope. Ask your students to divide into two groups and pair up. Ask two students to swing rope from both ends and make one student jump through the rope. This activity is so fun that students will ask to conduct it daily.
Take your students outside and give them a situation to line up. For example, ask students to line up in descending or ascending order based on their date of birth, hobbies, etc. This activity has two benefits such as it helps students learn new things about one another, and you will get a much-deserved two minutes of silence after teaching a class full of energetic toddlers.
It is a perfect game to engage a large group. Your entire class should form a circle and hold hands. Take a hula hoop and place it on a student’s arm at one point in the circle. The goal is get the hula hoop all the way around the circle without releasing their hands. Then enjoy the laughter as everyone wiggles the hula hoop around themselves.
Need an extra challenge? Have your students race against the clock to see how fast they can get the hula hoop all the way around the circle, or divide the class into groups of two for more competition.
Strategic Activities for Team Building
Build problem-solving and critical thinking skills with these strategy based team building games.
Scavenger hunts are a great option for larger groups. Students can search for a single hidden prize or a list of objects. Another variation is to have students find one object for each rainbow color or letter of the alphabet.
Kids can work in pairs or small groups. If they’re looking for many objects, they will learn it’s fastest to strategize and divvy out the objects each person is responsible for finding.
You need to make a structure out of Legos or building blocks. Then hide it from view, under a tarp or a bedsheet.
Split your students into small groups, and instruct them to designate one person as the leader. The leader on each team comes to your desk and has ten seconds to look at and memorize your structure. Then they get 25 seconds to describe to their teammates how to build it.
Finally, the teammates will get one minute (or longer if it’s complicated) to replicate your structure. Once the time is up, unveil your structure to the class and decide which team got the closest to the original.
You can repeat this process with a new structure and new leader from each team as often as you’d like.
Give each team the same building materials and a set time for creating a structure. The building materials can range from books to duct tape to boxes to string. Whatever it may be.
Decide if your student teams should all build the same thing, like the best bridge, or leave it open-ended and see where their imaginations take them.
Final Words
Hoping that the details enclosed here about Team Building Activities for Elementary Students are helpful for the teachers to engage their kids in fun activities and games. Get to know more related posts such as Quick Games To Play In The Classroom For Students and so on at our site.