AD | Collaborative post
Making a good team player is a crucial part of all children’s development, especially when a lot of their time in school relies on working in teams to complete tasks and building projects in lesson time. Extracurricular activities also rely heavily on working together as a team in order to reach overarching goals.
To help your child understand the importance of teamwork, here are some tips you can use to raise a team player from this preschool in New York.
Encourage your child to pick up team-based activities
The biggest thing your child can do is get involved in as many team activities as they can. It’s probably the easiest way to show your child what it means to work well in a team and collaborate with others in an exciting way. Most sports are heavily focused on working together in small teams to get to a specific goal, or moving a ball along, or defending. Team-based activities will encourage children to have a lot more fun and enjoy the aspect of working together.
Promote an environment where children work together
Group days out with your child’s friends, parties, activity centres and school trips are all examples of ways where your child will learn about the importance of teamwork. If you encourage your child to invite their friends over and organise activities together then they’re more likely to learn about how socialising and communicating can make better team players.
Read stories about working together
A lot of child-friendly books have stories where working as a team is a big part of the moral of the story. Sit with them and talk about the importance of teamwork when you read these stories and get them feeling involved. They may end up trying out a series of activities with their friends that encourage working in a team.
Play board games or card games
Some board or card games can be worked on individually or in teams, but both ways of playing encourage teamwork and discipline. It gives children the understanding of healthy competition, as well as having fun. Your child may enjoy playing these same games with their friends and help each other out at the same time, which can strengthen friendships.
Try cooking or baking
Ask your child and any friends or siblings they have to work on certain tasks to reach an end goal. For example, one child mixes the baking mixture together, while the other works on lining the baking tray for when the mixture is ready. When they see the results they’ll feel much more motivated to work together on future tasks.