Are you tired of ho-hum co-op classes? Do you need a creative class? A challenging class? A class that teaches team work? This class does all three of those–it is one of my favorites!
Think! Team Building Challenge teaches kids to learn from failure, promotes creative thinking and problem solving, and helps them learn to work together.
This class was born out of my desire to do these creative-critical thinking projects with my son. I always struggled to find the time to work them into our homeschool schedule.
Each week students received a stack of supplies and one basic instruction such as construct a tall-as-possible tower. No instructions were given. My helper and I tried not to give much advice or ideas. The students built by our motto: If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!
I'm not going to claim that this class was all gumdrops and rainbows. We had moments of failure; moments of frustration– red faces and even some tears. But we also had those tiptop mountain moments–the second of success after the struggle. Amazing.
We repeated our motto (or battle cry) at the beginning of every class. "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!"
You can download the syllabus and supply list here.
If you have to teach co-op next semester, and haven't chosen your class, seriously consider this one. It's brainy-building and fun!
I have lots of Creative Homeschool Cooperative Classes compiled here on the blog.
You can also check out my Homeschool Co-op Class Ideas Pin Board.
Follow Homeschool Share's board Homeschool Co-op Class Ideas on Pinterest.
Love, love love this idea. Thanks! I will be doing this with my kids at home.
I love the syllabus. Thank you so much for sharing this. I’m definitely going to try these at some point with my kids. ~Liesl
Love this!
I love this!
It reminds me of a coop class I ran that I never finsihed psoting about, but you can find somea t my blog, like this one: http://traininghappyhearts.blogspot.com/2011/04/read-aloud-to-real-challenges-early.html and this one http://traininghappyhearts.blogspot.com/2011/04/read-aloud-to-real-challenges-my-friend.html
What a great class, thanks for pulling it together–our children will love this.
Thanks so much, I love these ideas!
This reminds me of a challenge that Michelle at Delightful Learning did awhile back ~ our kids LOVED it. Printing off the syllabus and checking them out! 🙂
Thank you for posting this! What great ideas!
I was wondering if you could share with me, was the supply list per “team” or was the class the whole team? and if so how many were in your class?
Hi Angela,if you click the links for each building activity, you will find the supplies listed. 🙂
What age
Group did you work with? Would you recxomed it with 4&5 yr
Olds?
what is the best age group to do this with? Would 4 and 5 yr olds be too young?
Hi Jamie,
Some of the younger students (8 year-olds) were frustrated. I would probably modify the activities for younger kids, but it’s definitely doable!
I was searching for team building activities for the beginning of school and came across your site. Love this, thanks!
HI! Awesome ideas! Can I use some of these ideas in a newsletter for my teacher colleauges? I'll put your website and name in it. Please let me know if that's OK.
Erica , BC Cooperative Learning
Erica,
Yes! 🙂Â
Thanks so much for sharing your awesome idea for a co-op class. Just finished a 26 week co-op class with 13 4th – 6th graders and they had a blast doing the ideas you have here and some others that I pulled from the Think blogspot you linked to. And I had a lot of fun teaching them too.
Love this, Sheila!!!
I love this class idea! Can I ask how long your classes were and if the task really kept the kids busy the whole time? I imagine offering the class and then having the kids bored looking at me halfway through. Also, did they take their creations home or did you pull them apart at the end of each class?
Classes were 60 min each. Sometimes we did two projects in one session. I kept all the plastic forks, knives, and spoons handy in case there was a team finished early. They worked on beating their former “plasticware tower” if there was extra time. Hope that helps!
Excited about this idea! Using it for our co-op this year! Today is the first day so wish me luck!
Good luck! Please let me know if you have any questions. I think you’ll have a blast!
What size were your teams? Looks like teams of 2 from your pictures, but I'm just checking! Thanks.
Sometimes we worked in pairs. Sometimes we worked in groups of 3-4.Â
Ami, thanks so much for pulling this class together and sharing it! We are going to use it in our co-op next session. I think the kids will have a blast!
Ami, this class looks awesome! Thank you for sharing.
For the “supplies needed,” did you require each student to bring all of those to the first class? If you provided those for the class, how many students did you have? I’m about to teach a class of 16-18 kids.
I think I had about 10 students (our co-op had a cap of 10 per class). I provided the supplies; students paid a fee.
We are going to use this in our co-op this semester. We are excited. 🙂