Teamwork Time #2 and a Freebie!!

Life is BUSY!! But here are some of the team building activities we have done the last two weeks!

Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig

Have you read this book yet?? It was such a sweet story about a boy who feels invisible and the new kid that helps others to include the boy! We were learning our class discussion rules and this book led to a great class discussion about how we treat other people. We did have to clear up some misconceptions about whether he was really invisible and if he actually wanted to be! ;)

Self Control Bubbles

I saw this on Pinterest and knew it would be a great activity for my kids! I first blew some bubbles and the kids of course started popping them right away. Then we talked about what self control meant and I told the kids that they could not pop the bubbles. It was humorous to watch a couple scoot as close as they could to the bubbles, then they started blowing the bubbles back up because at least they weren't popping them (their words, not mine!)! Then we took a couple of turns popping and not popping bubbles and thinking about self control!

Cup Stacking

This was our big team building activity last week! I split the kids up in two groups and they tried to build the biggest tower with cups!

It was fun to watch the kids work together and use self control (to not knock down the tower). I also switched up the groups and timed them one time. It was interesting to see the different groups cooperate and how they worked to get the job done!

When I feel... I can... chart

In order for kids to work together well, they need to understand how to deal with their feelings. After reading When Sophie Gets Angry, Really, Really Angry we talked about appropriate ways to deal with our feelings. Spur of the moment I realized that this would be a great anchor chart, so over the next several days we added to it! After seeing some common elements come up, we talked about where we wanted our quiet spot to be in our classroom.

We are Awesome

Alex is really into the Lego Movie so after watching it a million times one weekend, it turned into a little mini lesson! We started off listening to Kid President's Pep Talk and then we talked about how we are awesome. Then we danced to Everything is Awesome on Go Noodle and talked about how we are the most awesome when we work together as a team! The kids colored a picture of their awesome selves and wrote about some things that made them awesome. You can download the freebie here!

Teamwork and community building is all about helping the kids understand themselves, so they can better relate to others! I feel like for every team building activity we do, we also need to take time to reflect about ourselves. It has been really neat to see the kids come together and interact!

The next couple of weeks, my focus will really be on our Learner Profile and Attitudes. We have touched on a lot of them as we have talked about teamwork, but I want to make sure that they really understand what the terminology means and how it should impact their lives at home and school!