Interactive Team Building Kid Activities

Team building can be an essential part of creating a cohesive group, especially in groups and facilities where youth live in close quarters. Team building not only helps kids interact better with one another, it teaches skills that help kids integrate and interact more effectively and appropriately in everyday situations.

  1. Getting Familiar with Your Team

    • Have your group circle up and toss a ball to one another. Follow a specific pattern at first, allowing kids to become accustomed to one another. After throwing the ball in a set pattern for several minutes, have the group toss the ball randomly, with each child calling out another child's name just before he or she tosses the ball to him. This is a good way to start the team communicating among themselves quickly and efficiently.

    Building Team Strength

    • Tug of War is a classic team building exercise that will help your team members unify their strength and compensate for their weaknesses as a team. Tug of war teaches that the sum of a team is greater than the parts.

    Team Trust Building

    • Trust building is an important part of team building. One of the most effective exercises for developing trust amongst your group is to take turns falling backwards and catching one another. It's difficult to depend on others to catch you, but once your team has done this exercise successfully, you will see how easy it becomes to put your trust in the group.

    Unified Action

    • Tying the members of your team together at the waist with rope and having them walk across a balance beam is the culmination of your team building efforts. The previous exercises will bring the successful team to this point, where members participate in an activity that requires the team's unified action to complete a task. When your team can work together on this level, you have achieved your team-building goals.