"Team Building" Activities?

[TerriP]

Does anyone here have any experience with "Team Building" activities at work? My staff has been asked to plan our monthly meeting for October and we have to base it on a "team building" activity. We are stumped. We thought of a county wide "treasure hunt" involving all of our schools (we are the service center for all school districts in our county), but it was too much travel for only two hours. Then we thought of taking everyone to a local "corn maze" to break into teams and see who can find their way out of the maze first, but we can't get the maze owners to open up on a weekday for us.

Sooo, anyone here have any experience with this type of activity? We want it to be fun and playful....but can't think of anything creative. And, to be honest, my mind is on WDW right now and I'm pretty useless to my group! Thanks in advance for any ideas you might offer.

 

[mickey65]

We did an interesting one at the orientation for new teachers. Each team is given a certain amount of bristol board ( I think it was about 1/4 of a big sheet), 1 metre of tape, 10 straws and a pair of scissors. The teams are to build a tower with the materials. The objective is to build a tower that is the highest of all the groups, that will hold the weight of a marble without falling over.

After the teams have been working for 10 minutes, they are given another piece of bristol board and 1 more mertre of tape.

** Do not tell them at the start that they will be getting more materials**

The whole idea was to teach the idea of brain storming and planning rather than just jumping in with the first idea you have. To work as a team and come up with ideas and not just have individuals take over.

After it was over we had the debriefing and discussion. Things like what could of been done different, how can this be used in the classroom...things like that.

We had a great time with the towers! It was fun to see the different creative ideas that groups came up with. Also to see the reactions to successful towers and ones that wer not as well planned out.

 

[December99]

Our staff did one with a rope. We had approximately 25 people working on this.

Our director brought a rope to a staff retreat. We got into a rectangle shap and then we were given "blindfolds" (black pieces of fabric so that you couldn't see out of them). One side of the rectangle (about 5 people) were taken outside of the group. the rope was placed on the ground. Please note it was NOT tangled before we picked it up. The end person was instructed to pick up the rope and hand the "coiled" rope to the other end person. The group was then instructed to go back to their spots (by feeling and others directing them to their spot) in the rectangle. We (I was in the group that gathered the rope) were then instructed to find one end and begin passing it along the rectangle and we all had to work together on getting the rope strung throughout the rectangle until one end met up with the other end. We also had to try and keep our rectangle shape. There were many many many tangles that happened throughout the process. We had to work together on not stretching the rope too far and not letting it drag and hit the ground (that was another thing, the rope couldn't touch the ground).

It was kinda silly when we started but it ended up very interesting. And as we were doing this, the director went around and took pictures. It was funny to see people standing there doing nothing and you could see the impatience in their body language.