Community Building Games

“You know that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken...." - Plato

During the first week of school, I focus on building a community of caring and compassionate learners. I do this through class discussion, devotion and reflection time, and also by providing them with opportunities to work collaboratively to solve problems! Below are a few of my favourite first week activities. 

The Human Knot

This activity has been around forever and is a great communication and problem solving challenge. 

Materials Needed: 

- Empty space - clear the classroom or go outside!

Instructions: 

- Split your class into four groups (I did two groups of girls and two groups of guys) 

- Have each group make a circle facing in

- Have students raise their right hands, wave across the circle, and then take the right hand of someone across from them.

- Have students raise their left hand, wave either to their left or right, and take the hand of a person at least one body away from them.

- They are now sufficiently knotted in a circle facing each other. 

Goal: To untangle themselves without letting go of the hands they are holding. If they let go, they have to start again. 

This game could take many attempts to complete. It is a great exercise for learning to communicate (speak and listen), and work together to figure out how to untangle their arms. 

Once the four small groups have untangled themselves, have them join another group so there are two larger groups of students. Let them know that this will be more challenging, but will also be more satisfying once they untangle themselves!

Once we finish, I talk with the young ones about what worked well and what was challenging as they attempted to untangle themselves. 

Tallest Tower

This activity gives students a chance to create, collaborate and problem solve! It is also very exciting and loud as cups crash around the room. 

Materials: 

- Plastic cups (I had seven groups of four students with 60 cups each = 420 cups total)

- Empty space to build

Instructions: 

- Tell students they need to build the tallest structure they can using all of their cups.

- Give them a time limit (say 10-15 minutes)

- Spread them out so that it is difficult for them to see what other groups are building.

- Let them build. 

- Once time is up, do a gallery walk of all the structures (lots of oooohs and ahhhhhs are great here!) to see what worked and what didn't. 

- Have students go back to their structure and give them another five minutes to re-design and add any new ideas to their creations. 

- Discuss what worked well in their groups that they could transfer to projects in the future. 

- Discuss challenges that arose and how they solved them.  

Land Mines

This activity gives students a chance to build trust and practice giving specific instructions. 

Materials: 

- Enough blindfolds for half the class

- A large space 

- All the chairs from the class, along with other items to become land mines (I used all my baskets of books from my class library)

Instruction: 

- Have students choose a partner

- Give students directions on how to create their area filled with land mines. I had my students move all their chairs to the small field outside. Then they came back and took all my baskets of books and put them all over the grass. It looked really messy. They loved it! 

- Once your space is filled with obstacles, have the students stand at one end of the area with their partner and a blindfold. 

- Have a discussion about what it feels like to not be able to see what you are doing, the importance of working together and trusting each other, and the importance of giving specific instructions. 

- Let students know that they will be travelling from one end of the space to the other while blindfolded. The only thing helping them will be the words of their partner. They are not allowed to touch each other. Depending on the age of your students, you can have them navigate their partner around three or so obstacles on their way. Partners need to work together to get the blind person across the field without setting off (or touching) any land mines. 

- Demo with a student if you think it is needed. 

- Once partners get to the other side, they need to switch places so the speaker is now blind and listening to their partner. 

- Once everyone is finished, talk about what was challenging and see if anyone had any tips for navigating the mines well. 

- Have students find a new partner that they don't know as well and try again, this time navigating more mines. 

Hopefully some of these activities are useful for you in your class community building!