Team Building Activities For Elementary Students

Are you a teacher who is willing to improve the relations, communication, and collaboration of your students? Then, the best option I suggest is the team building activities for elementary students.

Team-building activities are the things used to develop good relations and collaboration within a group. It will improve the way your students perform in the classroom with each other and will be a great investment for the lives of students.

As a teacher who is going to try team-building activities with your students, first, you need to identify its importance. Then, I will introduce some interesting team-building activities for elementary students which you can use.

Since team building must be developed from the nursery, some virtual team building activities for nursery students will be discussed here. At the end of the reading, you will be able to organize team building activities with the support of the tips I’m going to provide.

Finally, let’s discuss how those team building activities for elementary students will help develop their social skills.

So, let’s start the mission to make your students more cooperative and closer with each other as a good team. I have listed the topics below that I discuss in this post. Feel free to jump straight to the one you are interested in. Let’s get started!

The importance of team building activities for elementary students

Team working is one of the major tasks in the professional world. In order to create a good team worker with good skills, it is better to build up team working skills from childhood.

Not only that but also, team-building activities for students are important to build up relations with others and work together within the classroom as well as within the society.

Identifying strengths and weaknesses

Team building activities are important for elementary students to get to know their friends further and get closer to them.

With the team working, they will know the strengths and weaknesses of each other and learn to use and overcome them fruitfully as a team.

Improve Communication Skills

They will become comfortable with each other through team building activities and improve their communication.

Communication is an important skill for students to socialize, and they will share their feelings and ideas freely with the improvement of communication with each other.

Learning Life Skills

Students learn to work together with cooperation and achieve goals together as a team. They will learn life skills of leadership, creative thinking, listen to others, and problem-solving through team building activities.

Empathy, self-esteem, and confidence build up in students through these activities and build up trust and mitigate conflicts. It will create a classroom environment more effective and peaceful.

Therefore, the massive importance of team-building activities for elementary students can be witnessed in building up their relationships and social skills. These skills and ability of team working transfer from childhood to adulthood as a successful professional.

Team building activities for elementary students – Examples

Here, you’ll find examples of five team building activities for preschool students which can be organized in the classroom.

Storytime

Storytime is one of the simple team-building activities for elementary students that can be conducted easily within the classroom. Create a circle with students and provide all of them with pictures containing animals, places, or objects.

Then start introducing a story and ask the next student to add extra narration to it using his picture. Likewise, continue the story with all the students, and finally, a creative and amazingly complex story will create with the ideas of every student.

This activity will improve creative thinking, listening, respect for others, coordination, and communication as a team. The outcome will give the students the spirit of teamwork.

Birthday line up

The Birthday lineup is a fun activity that can be organized easily. Ask students to line up according to the order of their birthdays, from January 1^st to December 31^st.  For this activity, everyone needs to know the birthdays of others, and they need to talk with each other to complete the game.

They need to work as a team to decide the order of their line. This activity can be conducted interestingly with the use of a line of chairs and ask students to make the birthday line on chairs by changing their places without touching the ground.

This team-building activity will let students know each other and talk with them. It will make them feel comfortable with others. And it will improve their cooperative skills and enhance team working.

Shrinking classroom

Shrinking the classroom is a funny game which improves team working skills. First, divide the class into two groups and ask both groups to stand in a defined place. Then, the teacher should reduce their standing area using ropes, chairs, or traffic cones and push them to a small area.

The teams should find out a way to stay in that limited area with all the group members. They need to organize their skills to fit into a rapidly shrinking classroom. The team with the smallest classroom will win the game.

This activity will build up confidence, courage, creative thinking, team spirit, and coordination of students.

Card Towers

Card tower is also a good team building activity for elementary students. Divide the class into teams with 6-8 members. Then provide each group one or more card packs and ask them to create the tallest tower possible from those cards.

The teacher can observe each student’s creativity, leadership, and team working, and the team who built the tallest tower will win the game.

It is one of the simple team building activities for preschool students, and it will improve the communication with each other, respect the creativity of all, leadership, and good team working skills of students.

Classroom Party

A classroom party can be organized with students for the festivals like Christmas, New Year, or Halloween. Split the class into teams and assign each team several tasks such as decoration, food and beverages, classroom games, entertainment items, etc.

Guide them to conduct those activities and observe their performance as a team to fulfill the task. Then at the end of the party appreciate the best team and all the performances of the students.

This will create skills of coordination, event planning, taking responsibilities, creativity, leadership, collaboration with others, courage to achieve targets, and good team working.

Virtual team-building activities for nursery students

As we all are in a pandemic situation, every educational and professional activity is confined to the virtual setting. This heavily affected the nursery students more than others because they are too young, and it’s difficult for them to adapt to the virtual settings. 

Nursery is the most important place for kids to build up their skills, and it lays the foundation for the lives of kids to socialize. Even within this virtual platform, teachers need to find out effective virtual team building activities for nursery students to take the engagement and concentration of students.

I have mentioned five virtual team-building activities that will be suitable for nursery students. You can try them.

Detective

Detective is another simple and interesting game that can be conducted with nursery students in a virtual setting. First, select a student as a detective and another student as a leader. Then ask the detective to mute the device, close his eyes and count to thirty.

Then ask the leader to begin a motion such as tapping the head or waving a hand. Then the rest of the students should follow it. After the count ends, the detective can open his eyes, unmute the device and observe others.

After a minute, the leader must change his motion into another, and the team should follow him. The detective needs to observe and identify the leader. 

The detective may get three chances to guess, and then a new detective and a new leader should be appointed. This game is really interesting, and it develops the observation, concentration, following guidance, leadership, and team working skills of students.

DIY Craft Challenge

DIY Craft Challenge is also included in virtual team building activities for preschool students. Ask students to get ready for the virtual video session with papers, colored pencils, glue, scissors, and all the necessary items with them.

The teacher can ask all the students to create the same object at the same time by instructing them the way it should be done. Then, students can help each other in creating them, and it’s fun to see all of them doing the same creation together. If not, ask students to create a DIY craft that they prefer by using the same items. 

The teacher can observe everything students do. Then, DIY Craft Competition can be conducted and appreciates the efforts of all students and let them see the creations of their friends.

This will build up team working, concentration, creativity, helping others, and the cooperative skills of students.

Dice breakers

Dice breaker is one of the famous virtual team-building activities for elementary students, which can be conducted easily. Teachers can create an online dice breaker with several questions and ask students to roll a dice.

Then according to the dice they rolled, they need to answer the questions. Questions can be asked in their interesting topics such as favorite cartoon, food, drink, storybook, pet, hobby, place to travel, future ambition, etc.

This game will help everyone to know each other and their interests and to make friends. This will help students communicate without any shyness and share their ideas openly, and as a team, they will begin to be concerned about others and their ideas.

Hey, me too!

First, ask students to make auction paddles with papers and sticks. Then during the video session, name something your students have, such as a brother, sister, pet, curly hair, etc.

If students have them, ask them to raise their paddles. Instead of paddles, the raise hand option too can be used for this game. Ask students to see who has common things like them.

This fun activity helps your students to identify their common things interestingly.

Tiny Campfire

In this situation, we cannot conduct physical campfires or such activities. Therefore, to give students that experience virtually, a tiny campfire can be organized.

With the help of parents, an indoor camping setting can be organized with tea light candles, matches, marshmallows, snacks, and blankets.

It will be a great experience to observe the camp settings of everyone virtually, and some scary stories and team building activities such as funny games can be conducted in this interesting setting.

Tips for organizing team building activities

When organizing team building activities for elementary students, it should be effectively planned. Here are some tips for you to organize them more fruitfully.

• Identify the objectives you aim to achieve from each activity
• Work under your goals
• Choose a better time
• Make it simple but interesting and exciting
• Use simple tools and materials
• Use indoors as well as outdoors
• Try to allow students to learn something new from each activity
• Allow them to do all the things on their own as a team by helping others

How do team building activities help to develop social skills?

Social skills are the interpersonal or soft skills that are used in social interaction. Developing social skills are really important for elementary students as it lays the foundation for their future.

Before interacting with society, elementary students need to collaborate with their friends, family, and surrounding. Therefore, one of the best ways to improve their social skills is by organizing team building activities for elementary students. 

Team building activities create a space for elementary students to know their friends and get closer to them. It paves the way to identify the strengths and weaknesses of everyone and teaches students to endure them.

While engaging in team building activities, they communicate with each other, and their communication skills develop. Through working as a team, elementary students learn to help others, leadership skills, and cooperation. It improves their creativity, skills of following guidelines, respecting, and listening to others.

Since team working is also a major social skill that students should achieve and therefore, team building activities heavily contribute to developing the social skills of elementary students.

Conclusion

Team building activities for elementary students is a really interesting topic to discuss, and it is more exciting to organize them. As I mentioned some simple team building activities for elementary students both in physical and virtual settings, it is easy for you to try them with your students.

Now, you know how to use team building activities as a powerful weapon to improve the skills of elementary students. So, keep going to make your students more skillful with fun and excitement.

Thank you for reading! If you find this article useful, stay tuned with Edu Nursery for more valuable content.