Is your kid’s birthday party coming up? Maybe you’re just getting together with a few friends and have realized there will be 11 children in the garden? A little chaos is bound to ensue, but the benefits for kids of playing, discovering new things and interacting with other children are invaluable.
When playing team games, kids start learning the core principles of cooperation and idea testing. Perhaps even more importantly for preschool-aged children, working in a group can boost each child’s self-esteem and lead them to attempt new challenges.
Here are a few of my favorite team games for kids:
1. Human Alphabet
How to play
- Divide the children into groups of 2 or 3 players.
- Each round, draw a letter on a piece of paper and show it to the children.
- The first team to make the letter using their bodies wins a point.
The benefits
Understanding the shape and structure of letters is a key early literacy skill. At the same time, the children will have to communicate well and think creatively to win the game.
2. Animal Charades
How to play
- Create around 10 Animal Cards by printing pictures of animals and pasting them on pieces of card, or simply draw your own!
- Repeat this process to create Action Cards, which depict common activities such as running, jumping or singing.
- Split the children into two teams.
- Each turn, one child stands up and picks an animal card. They must then act out the animal while the rest of their team guesses. When the correct animal has been guessed, the child grabs an action card, and acts out the action as that animal. If their team can guess both the animal and the action in under 3 tries, they win a point!
For a full video tutorial on this game, just visit the Curious World App and search for ‘Animal Charades’.
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The benefits
By choosing the animals and actions they are interested in, children can let their creative juices flow and really make this game their own. While they enjoy being silly with their friends, they will also begin to learn about the difference between nouns and verbs.
3. Walk the Talk
How to play
- Split the kids into two teams.
- Select one child from each team and blindfold them.
- Choose a particular point in the area as the ‘goal’.
- Each team then has to direct their blindfolded team member to the goal. The winning team is the first to succeed!
The benefits
As this activity can become very noisy, the blindfolded children learn to focus on the right instructions and follow them appropriately. Meanwhile, the teams can think outside the box and come up with different techniques to convey instructions.
What are your favorite team games for kids? Let us know on Facebook!
