20 Best Indoor and Outdoor Team Building Activities for Kids (2024)

Collaboration with others to perform and complete a task is an important personality trait. For succeeding professionally and personally, being a team player is vital for a person. Teaching teamwork skills through team building activities for kids early on can develop kids’ emotional and academic character.

A study showed that teamwork can help students with academic skills and gain better career opportunities. Thus, teachers should often practice team-building activities in classrooms to develop leadership and cooperation skills among students.

This article will cover the best 10-10 indoor and outdoor team building activities for kids that can prepare them for tomorrow.

4 Reasons Why Team Building Activities Are Useful for Kids

Team building activities help to build character skills among students. They learn to lead a team and follow orders without losing their voice. Team-building activities for kids are helpful for the following reasons:

1. Better Communication

Team building activities develop “talk and listen” skills for students. Talk means providing input during team discussions and making their opinions stand out. Listening is a trait that helps children receive other team members’ suggestions, process that information, and discuss it with everyone.

Team building activities can develop communication skills among students that will give them the confidence to express their thoughts clearly.

2. Problem-Solving Growth

When students solve a problem in a group, they learn to use their logical mindsets better. They learn to understand the strengths and weaknesses of individual team members to solve the problem. Students also learn to delegate work and think of realistic solutions.

3. Emotional Growth

Sharing hardship can develop emotional traits in students like empathy, cooperation, and respect. In challenging team activities, kids learn to share their struggles with other team members. They also understand the value of helping and sharing your burdens with others. This will allow students to express their emotions and understand other people’s feelings at the right time.

4. Leadership Skills

Teamwork is a stepping stone to nurturing leadership skills in your class. Working in a team allows students to lead other members. They learn to take responsibility for their actions. When children pick leadership skills early in their lives, they grow as disciplined and considerate people.

10 Fun Outdoor Classroom Team Building Activities for Kids

Your students have already coped all day indoors. So, you should take them outdoors for some fresh air and participate in some entertaining team-building activities, such as:

1. Silent Line Up

Take your class outside and give them a situation to line up. For example, ask students to line up in descending or ascending order based on their birth date, hobbies, grades, etc. This team-building activity has two benefits — it helps students learn new things about one another, and you will get a much-deserved two minutes of silence after teaching a class full of energetic toddlers.

2. Group Rope Jumping

Rope jumping is a simple team-building activity for kids to teach coordination and symmetry. You need a big jumping rope and pair your students into groups of three for this activity. Ask two students to swing rope from both ends and make one student jump through the rope. This activity is so fun that your students will ask you to organize it daily.

3. Human Knot

Human knot is a popular team-building activity. It is a straightforward activity — make 5-6 students sit in a circle and ask them to hold each other’s hands randomly. After that, ask them to untangle their hands without losing their grip slowly. Students learn to work together to achieve the same goal with this activity. They also learn to strategize and communicate with others.

4. Blind Guide

The blind guide is a fun outdoor team-building activity for kids. In this activity, you have to blindfold one student and let others guide them to their destination. You can make this activity more fun by using different props and setting up various hurdles along the way. This activity will teach students how to listen to instructions and follow them. It is a perfect team trust-building activity.

5. What’s on Your Head

This activity is a version of Pictionary. Ask your class to write the name of a place, thing, or animal on a piece of paper. After that, ask them to stick it on a student’s forehead whose personality matches the name mentioned on the paper. The person has to guess the name mentioned on the paper without looking at it.

It is a perfect activity to improve communication and observation skills among students.

6. Fingertip Hula Hoop

You can improve coordination among your students using a simple hula hoop. Pair two students and give them a hula hoop. Make them stand on opposite ends, placing a hula hoop between them. Now, let them lower down a hula hoop only using a fingertip.

7. Scavenger Hunt

The scavenger hunt is a classic outdoor team activity for kids. Create a list of different objects or things your students have to find around them, like a live bug, garbage bin, flowers, etc. This activity is more challenging by dividing your class into two teams.

8. Save the Egg

With this activity, you can improve coordination and problem-solving skills among your students. Divide your class into small groups and give an egg to each group. Then, challenge them to drop the egg from the classroom window without breaking it.

9. Volunteering

You can make your students responsible citizens through this team-building activity. Take your students outdoors to volunteer somewhere, like a retirement home. When your students explore empathy and share good work, this will improve their emotional understanding.

10. Play a Sports

Take your students to the school gymnasium or park to play team sports like football, basketball, etc.

10 Entertaining Indoor Classroom Team Building Activities for Kids

If it’s raining like crazy or freezing outside, you can move your team-building activities indoors. Here are many entertaining indoor classroom activities that you can perform with your students, such as:

11. Draw a Puzzle

It is a perfect indoor team-building activity for toddlers. You should take a printout of a cartoon character photo and cut it into four pieces. Divide your class into groups of four and give a piece to each student. Ask them to draw the image and complete the puzzle.

12. Tell a Story

If you want to spark some creativity among your students while nurturing their team-bonding skills, this activity is perfect for the occasion. Divide your class into small groups and ask them to create a unique story to share with an entire class. This will give your students a chance to be confident and creative.

13. Tag a Person

This one is a challenging team-building activity to improve coordination and communication among students. Once you have divided your class into small teams, give them cues like “tag a person wearing blue,” “tag a person whose birthday is next month,” etc. The team with the highest proper tags will win.

14. Group Juggling

Little kids will enjoy this team-building activity. Just give them a ball or any other object that they can juggle. In group juggling, they will learn to trust and have fun together.

15. Shrinking Classroom

Divide your class into groups of two and challenge them to adjust themselves in a small space. You can give a mat to each team so they all can fit within the mat’s surface without falling or crossing the boundary.

16. Classroom Party

Give a theme to your students and ask them to organize a classroom party. Your class will have a blast planning decorations, food, music, and other party elements. Along the way, they will pick some team bonding skills like coordination, communication, etc.

17. Decorate a Bulletin Board

You can give your students a challenge to design the classroom bulletin board. To make things more fun, provide a theme for bulletin boards like spring, summer, etc.

18. Quiz Time

You will not find a better team-building activity than this one to entertain your students and test their knowledge. Divide your class into two groups and give them one buzzer each. Now, you have to ask random questions and the team which knows the answer will press the buzzer and get one point for every correct answer. It is like hosting a minigame show in your class.

19. Passing the Balloon

Give each student an empty balloon and a piece of paper. Ask them to write simple get-to-know-you questions on their paper, such as “How old are you” or “How did you celebrate your birthday.” Next, put the paper inside the balloon, blow it, and pass it around. Now, ask each student to burst a balloon and answer the question.

20. Lego Challenge

Gather up your students, pair them in groups of two, and give them the challenge to create something out of Lego blocks like a tower, car, etc.

Parting Remarks

Team building activities are essential to prepare your students for a better tomorrow. These activities help students become good leaders, listeners, communicators, and confident people.

Therefore, ensure to include team-building activities in your curriculum. We have already shared 20 easy team-building activities for kids so you can start with them and develop confident little leaders.

Here are more online educational resources for kids that will help with their learning experience and make them smarter.

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