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Think! Team Building Challenge

November 2, 2011 by Ami 31 Comments

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. 

Think! Team Building Challenge Homeschool Co-op Class from Walking by the Way

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.

Filed Under: co-op capers, creative cooperative classes Tagged With: building, co-op, critical thinking

Comments

  1. Belinda says

    November 3, 2011 at 10:16 am

    Love, love love this idea. Thanks! I will be doing this with my kids at home.

  2. Liesl says

    November 7, 2011 at 9:22 am

    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

  3. Clementine says

    November 7, 2011 at 9:28 pm

    Love this!

  4. Martianne says

    November 11, 2011 at 2:20 pm

    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

  5. Tammy says

    March 13, 2012 at 9:26 am

    What a great class, thanks for pulling it together–our children will love this.

  6. Amy says

    March 17, 2012 at 12:38 am

    Thanks so much, I love these ideas!

  7. Jolanthe says

    March 25, 2012 at 9:24 pm

    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! 🙂

  8. Angela @ kinder Days says

    August 8, 2012 at 4:40 am

    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?

  9. Ami says

    August 8, 2012 at 7:38 am

    Hi Angela,if you click the links for each building activity, you will find the supplies listed. 🙂

  10. Jamie says

    September 4, 2012 at 9:57 pm

    What age
    Group did you work with? Would you recxomed it with 4&5 yr
    Olds?

  11. Jamie says

    September 5, 2012 at 9:26 am

    what is the best age group to do this with? Would 4 and 5 yr olds be too young?

  12. Ami says

    September 11, 2012 at 2:15 pm

    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!

  13. Brandi says

    May 29, 2013 at 9:18 am

    I was searching for team building activities for the beginning of school and came across your site. Love this, thanks!

  14. erica t says

    August 13, 2013 at 10:10 pm

    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

  15. Ami says

    September 5, 2013 at 11:47 am

    Erica,

    Yes! 🙂 

  16. Sheila Swofford says

    May 15, 2014 at 2:30 am

    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.  

  17. ami says

    June 2, 2014 at 7:41 am

    Love this, Sheila!!!

  18. Michelle H says

    October 23, 2015 at 12:40 am

    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? 

  19. ami says

    January 5, 2016 at 3:30 pm

    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!

  20. Lindsay Davis says

    September 12, 2016 at 7:16 am

    Excited about this idea! Using it for our co-op this year! Today is the first day so wish me luck! 

  21. ami says

    September 13, 2016 at 6:46 pm

    Good luck! Please let me know if you have any questions. I think you’ll have a blast!

  22. Kelly Smith says

    September 16, 2016 at 11:47 pm

    What size were your teams?  Looks like teams of 2 from your pictures, but I'm just checking!  Thanks.

  23. ami says

    September 17, 2016 at 12:48 pm

    Sometimes we worked in pairs. Sometimes we worked in groups of 3-4. 

  24. Shannon says

    September 30, 2016 at 6:35 pm

    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!

  25. Jenny says

    March 25, 2018 at 9:39 am

    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.

  26. ami says

    April 6, 2018 at 9:57 am

    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.

  27. Mandy says

    September 3, 2018 at 11:26 am

    We are going to use this in our co-op this semester. We are excited. 🙂

  28. Kati says

    January 1, 2019 at 4:01 pm

    I am so excited about this – thank you for sharing! As far as materials- the items listed are amounts needed for each group right? So for week 1 would you give each group of 2-4 1 box of spaghetti and 1 bag of marshmallows? Or did they even need that much? Sorry just trying to figure out how much to buy. 🙂

  29. Kati says

    January 3, 2019 at 4:25 am

    Could you tell me how long your class was? The weeks with two projects did you do both in the time period? Also materials listed are per group right? So you’d give a group of 2-3 1 box spaghetti and 1 bag marshmallows? Thank you for this! Excited to start my class Tuesday. 🙂

  30. ami says

    January 3, 2019 at 2:22 pm

    The class was about 60 min. Yes, we did both projects in the time period. 🙂 And yes, you are right about the supplies.

    Have fun!

Trackbacks

  1. Have Your Kids Join in on these Engineering Activities! - Homeschool Den says:
    January 4, 2015 at 6:37 pm

    […] Thanks again to  Ami over at Walking By the Way and  Kids Who Think for posting the Think Challenge […]

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Welcome! I’m a big believer in inspiring kids, cultivating curiosity, delight directed learning, living books, field trip adventures, and keeping your sanity while homeschooling. I hope you find something encouraging here today! You can learn a bit more about me here.

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