Team work

Children need many and varied opportunities to work together.  Learning to work as part of a group does not come automatically, it takes practice.










Here is a recent example of such an assignment.  The children were divided up into groups, given a recipe, a bowl, and ingredients and told to make play dough.  There was one hitch.  The children were given  1/3 cup measuring cups and the recipe called for several full cups of ingredients. We discussed that it takes three 1/3 cups to make a cup and then the children were on their own.   I stepped back and let the children work out how they were going to accomplish the task.

Each group had different solutions for dividing up the tasks and taking turns. They conferred with each other about adaptations  to the recipe to make the play dough the right consistency. In the end both groups successfully had a hunk of play dough for each child to take home.