problem solving life skills activities

13 Printable Life Skills Worksheets for Students and Adults

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Have you ever wished there was a guidebook containing step-by-step instructions on the things that you’re supposed to know once you become an adult?

Life can be very confusing at times.

Nevertheless, we are often expected to know how to deal with everything we experience.

Somehow, we’re supposed to know that clothes need to be separated by color when we’re doing the laundry.

We’re also supposed to be aware that job interviews have a certain dress code that we need to follow if we’re to be seriously considered for the position we’re applying for.

Possessing the necessary life skills for any given situation helps people have a better chance at coping with whatever life throws at them.

In this article, we’re sharing a collection of printable life skills worksheets that can equip both adults and students with the know-how necessary for functioning in everyday life.

You’ll find worksheets that help you develop housekeeping, technical, financial, and self-awareness skills.

Before diving into our list, let’s talk more about the importance of life skills.

Table of Contents

Why Do We Need Life Skills?

The World Health Organization, UNESCO, and UNICEF recommend 10 core life skills as the basis for a healthy, competent, well-adjusted individual.

You need life skills to thrive and fully function as an adult.

For example, knowing some basic housekeeping not only guarantees a clean, healthy, and safe environment for you to live in, but being free from clutter also provides peace of mind.

If you possess the following abilities…

Problem solving
Making healthy lifestyle choices
Communicating properly
Managing your finances well

…then you’re well on your way to becoming a functioning and contributing member of society.

Let’s check out some worksheets to help you develop these skills.

Life Skills Worksheets for Adults

1. brain dump worksheet.

Knowing how to cope with stress is one of the 10 core life skills identified by UNESCO, WHO, and UNICEF.

Do you often find yourself overwhelmed with thoughts about things that make you worried or anxious? One way to relieve the thoughts weighing you down is by writing everything out on paper.

This stress-busting exercise is known as a brain dump .

This worksheet provides the space you need to offload all that’s going on inside your head. We recommend doing a brain dump at least once a week to clear your head and prevent the buildup of stress and anxiety.

2. Developing Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is an essential life skill involving troubleshooting problems that crop up in your daily life. It often involves the application of mindful communication.

Furthermore, critical thinking teaches us how to think independently.

This printable is a compilation of different worksheets that can help you develop and strengthen critical thinking skills.

3. Empathy Workbook

Empathy allows us to put ourselves in other people’s shoes and imagine how they could be feeling during a particular situation. It is one of the essential life skills that we need to learn to navigate through life and our relationships with others more smoothly.

This workbook provides the basics about empathy and why it’s important. It has activities and guide questions to help users develop a deeper understanding of this life skill. Dedicated spaces are provided for writing answers and reflections.

4. Wall of Resilience

This worksheet helps you develop personal resilience by identifying the areas of your life that need improvement. It also provides tips for strengthening particular areas.

The areas that the worksheet recommends you work on include:

Relationships
Rest and relaxation
Physical activity
Spirituality

5. Weighing the Consequences of a Decision

Sometimes it’s really difficult to make a decision, especially if you’re not sure of the consequences of your decision.

Nevertheless, being able to make decisions and accept their consequence is an important life skill.

This worksheet is designed to help you consider the foreseeable positive and negative consequences of a decision. Hopefully, with the help of this worksheet, you can learn how to accept and face the outcome of your choices.

6. Hold Yourself Accountable

Accountability and personal responsibility are an essential life skill for success.

If you keep making excuses for your failures, you might become an unreliable person. Learning to be accountable for your actions is easier with this worksheet.

7. Self-Love Worksheet

Perhaps one of the most difficult life skills to learn as an adult is how to practice self-compassion.

We often beat ourselves up for the mistakes we make. Furthermore, many of us find it easier to prioritize other people's welfare than our own.

This self-love worksheet keeps you mindful of the ways that you can show yourself appreciation and love. ( Here are some pointers for loving yourself more. )

Worksheets for Students

8. step by step guide to laundry.

Doing the laundry is one of the life skills that older kids will find useful once they find places of their own. This worksheet provides a clear-cut guide to doing this essential household chore.

Hang it in the laundry area for easy access for those who need some visual prompts for washing their clothes.

9. Kitchen Safety

If your kids are learning how to cook, they need to understand how to stay safe in the kitchen. This worksheet provides tips, warnings, and instructions on how to safely navigate around the kitchen while cooking.

In addition to notes about kitchen safety, the worksheet provides a quizlet to check whether your child has understood the topic they're learning about.

10. How to Write a Check

Although financial transactions these days are usually done through electronic banking or debit cards, knowing how to write a check is still a useful life skill that everyone should have.

This worksheet helps users correctly write checks. It features a diagram and a blank check that you can practice on.

11. Communicating Effectively via Email

An essential life skill that is a great help for young people's future careers is communicating effectively.

This worksheet teaches students and young people how to write polite and professional emails in preparation for the correspondence they might send when they are in a workplace.

The worksheet also provides information about the various parts of an email, as well as tips for filling out the sections appropriately.

12. Helping Others

Children are sometimes involved in conflicts with their peers. Adults need to show them the skills necessary for dealing with conflict and empower them to take action that shows critical thinking, problem-solving ability, and conflict-resolution skills.

This worksheet helps students role-play a couple of social situations for the practical application of several life skills.

13. Making an Appointment

Another essential life skill that students need to learn is how to set an appointment.

This worksheet is a guide to social interaction. An example dialogue is added so students can practice the steps for accomplishing this.

Final Thoughts

Life skills are essential not only for our success, but also for our survival.

Ideally, many of these skills need to be taught early. The more life skills children and young people have, the more easily they can become contributing and functioning members of society.

Speaking of skills, here are several more resources that you might want to check out about this subject:

Learn Something New: 101 New Skills to Learn Starting Today
135 Soft Skills List to Stand Out on a Resume or Job Application
How to Use Deliberate Practice to Master ANY Skill
7 Styles for Learning New Things (and Actually Remembering Them!)
21 Fun Tools to Learn Something New Every Day

Finally, if you want to take your goal-setting efforts to the next level, check out this FREE printable worksheet and a step-by-step process that will help you set effective SMART goals .

life skills worksheets | life skills worksheets for adults | free printable life skills worksheets

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5 Problem-Solving Activities for the Classroom

Problem-solving skills are necessary in all areas of life, and classroom problem solving activities can be a great way to get students prepped and ready to solve real problems in real life scenarios. Whether in school, work or in their social relationships, the ability to critically analyze a problem, map out all its elements and then prepare a workable solution is one of the most valuable skills one can acquire in life.

Educating your students about problem solving skills from an early age in school can be facilitated through classroom problem solving activities. Such endeavors encourage cognitive as well as social development, and can equip students with the tools they’ll need to address and solve problems throughout the rest of their lives. Here are five classroom problem solving activities your students are sure to benefit from as well as enjoy doing:

1. Brainstorm bonanza

Having your students create lists related to whatever you are currently studying can be a great way to help them to enrich their understanding of a topic while learning to problem-solve. For example, if you are studying a historical, current or fictional event that did not turn out favorably, have your students brainstorm ways that the protagonist or participants could have created a different, more positive outcome. They can brainstorm on paper individually or on a chalkboard or white board in front of the class.

2. Problem-solving as a group

Have your students create and decorate a medium-sized box with a slot in the top. Label the box “The Problem-Solving Box.” Invite students to anonymously write down and submit any problem or issue they might be having at school or at home, ones that they can’t seem to figure out on their own. Once or twice a week, have a student draw one of the items from the box and read it aloud. Then have the class as a group figure out the ideal way the student can address the issue and hopefully solve it.

3. Clue me in

This fun detective game encourages problem-solving, critical thinking and cognitive development. Collect a number of items that are associated with a specific profession, social trend, place, public figure, historical event, animal, etc. Assemble actual items (or pictures of items) that are commonly associated with the target answer. Place them all in a bag (five-10 clues should be sufficient.) Then have a student reach into the bag and one by one pull out clues. Choose a minimum number of clues they must draw out before making their first guess (two- three). After this, the student must venture a guess after each clue pulled until they guess correctly. See how quickly the student is able to solve the riddle.

4. Survivor scenarios

Create a pretend scenario for students that requires them to think creatively to make it through. An example might be getting stranded on an island, knowing that help will not arrive for three days. The group has a limited amount of food and water and must create shelter from items around the island. Encourage working together as a group and hearing out every child that has an idea about how to make it through the three days as safely and comfortably as possible.

5. Moral dilemma

Create a number of possible moral dilemmas your students might encounter in life, write them down, and place each item folded up in a bowl or bag. Some of the items might include things like, “I saw a good friend of mine shoplifting. What should I do?” or “The cashier gave me an extra $1.50 in change after I bought candy at the store. What should I do?” Have each student draw an item from the bag one by one, read it aloud, then tell the class their answer on the spot as to how they would handle the situation.

Classroom problem solving activities need not be dull and routine. Ideally, the problem solving activities you give your students will engage their senses and be genuinely fun to do. The activities and lessons learned will leave an impression on each child, increasing the likelihood that they will take the lesson forward into their everyday lives.

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Problem solving

Problem solving lesson plan

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Download the full lesson plan pack including all related resources

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Problem Solving: Lesson plan

Problem solving: Presentation slides

Demonstrating your skills quick fire activity

Problem solving in practice: Interactive worksheet

Our problem solving content focuses on one of these skills and develops understanding of the six stages of problem solving, as well as identifying different types of situations in which young people might already be using these skills. Furthermore, it encourages them to use an adaptive approach, explaining that different types of problems can be approached in different ways.

The activities on this page support your teaching of these skills through an independent activity, quick activities or a full length, curriculum-linked lesson plan.

Teaching resources:

Problem solving: Lesson plan and presentation slides – full lesson plan including icebreaker for use with a group of students in the classroom
Demonstrating your skills: Quick-fire activity – 10 minute activity for a group of students in the classroom, can be used as an icebreaker for the lesson plan
Problem solving in practice: Interactive worksheet – activity for independent learning whether remote or in class

Lesson plan

(60 -75 minutes)

This lesson is designed to equip young people with an adaptable approach to solving problems, large or small. It includes a short film and scenarios that encourage development of practical problem solving skills which can be useful for learning, day to day life, and when in employment.

By the end of the lesson, students will be able to:

Identify problems of different scales and what is needed to solve them
Illustrate the use of an adaptable approach to solving problems
Understand that problem solving is a core transferable skill and identify its usefulness in a work setting
Work on a problem solving activity in a team

The lesson aims to reinforce students’ understanding of the potential future applications of this skill as they move into the world of work, particularly in an activity differentiated for an older or more able group on creating new opportunities.

Quick-fire activity

(5 - 10 minutes)

The demonstrating your skills quick-fire activity focuses on helping young people understand the key skills that are needed in the workplace, including the importance of problem solving.

Students will be asked to name the skills being demonstrated in a variety of scenarios, and identify ways they’re already using those skills in this short activity.

You might find it useful as a starter or icebreaker activity to begin a lesson, or at the end to allow students to put what they have just learnt in the Problem solving lesson into practice.

Interactive worksheet

(20 - 25 minutes)

Please note that students below the age of 14 cannot sign up for their own LifeSkills account. Any independent tasks must be printed or downloaded and provided digitally for them to complete as they are currently hosted on educator pages.

The Problem solving in practice interactive worksheet introduces some of the themes from the full lesson plan and gives students some practical strategies for problem solving, including introducing the six stages of problem solving. The worksheet can be printed or completed digitally, so can be used flexibly to give students practise putting their problem solving skills into action. You might choose to assign it:

As homework following the Problem solving lesson
For independent study
For remote learning

Looking for more ways to boost self confidence with LifeSkills?

Other lessons that may prove useful for students to build on these activities include the Adaptability and Innovation and idea generation lessons. Alternatively, consider encouraging them to apply their skills through Steps to starting a business or the Social action toolkit .

Why not build problem solving in as a focus in your students’ wider curriculum? Refer to our Content guide to find out how this resources can be used as part of your teaching.

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Why not try one of these next?

Staying positive (resilience)

Staying positive and learning through experience are key to succeeding in challenging situations. Try this lesson and help your students succeed at work.

Good leadership styles and effective teamwork can help students excel in their future workplace. Read more about team leader skills in this lesson.

Social action toolkit

Build a comprehensive social action programme and support young people to access enriching experiences that build transferable skills for work.

Resilience Counseling: 12 Worksheets to Use in Therapy

While it will lead to prolonged distress for some, others will return from the ordeal stronger in mind and spirit, having met the challenge and returned to purposeful lives (Southwick & Charney, 2018).

While it is neither realistic nor advisable to shield yourself from risk, it is possible to develop resilience and rise to “the challenge of tough times and find unimagined strengths within yourself” (Neenan, 2018, p. 3).

This article explores how counseling can help build such resilience in clients, helping them to see adversity as an opportunity for growth and using existing and new psychological potential to overcome challenges. In addition, resilience to manage daily challenges are also addressed in resilience counseling, which we discuss here.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Resilience Exercises for free . These engaging, science-based exercises will help you to effectively deal with difficult circumstances and give you the tools to improve the resilience of your clients, students, or employees.

This Article Contains:

What is resilience in counseling, 2 examples of fostering resilience, why is resilience important in counseling, how to build resilience in counseling, 4 interventions and techniques for counselors, 3 best activities, worksheets, and exercises, a look at group resilience counseling, resources from positivepsychology.com, a take-home message.

While the popular view of resilience is that we can and should bounce back from adversity, this may not be a helpful approach in resilience counseling . It suggests that the resilient person effortlessly overcomes tough times to return to ‘normal’ without missing a beat (Neenan, 2018).

And yet, this is rarely the case. When we face genuine adversity, do our lives truly return to how things were before? Constantly looking back to how things used to be before a life-changing accident can lead to us becoming psychologically stuck .

Whether facing traumatic adversity or overcoming something less severe but still significant (such as layoffs at work or a challenging client), coming back requires time for adaptation and recovery (Neenan, 2018).

Counseling resilience typically involves a strong focus on how we interpret events. Through understanding their clients’ thinking, counselors gain insight into their inner world and identify attitudes and beliefs that are helping, harming, or hindering their ability to cope with difficult times and challenging events (Neenan, 2018).

Resilience counseling invites consideration and focus on the following resilience factors (Southwick & Charney, 2018):

Facing fear Showing courage and resilience does not suggest the absence of fear.
Imitating resilient role models Mirroring and adopting resilient behavior in those we admire can inspire our resilience.
Social support Resilience is reliant not solely on the individual, but also on having an entire support network.
Mental, emotional, and physical training Experiencing challenges and hardship is not always negative. When accompanied and supported by training, it can result in opportunities to learn to be more resilient.
Increasing cognitive and emotional flexibility Resilient people tend to be flexible in how they think about challenges and their reaction to stress.
Finding meaning, purpose, and growth There are many examples of individuals who have remained resilient in the face of extreme hardship, relying heavily on the meaning they attach to their lives.
Fostering optimism Realistic optimism is an important factor in remaining resilient.

While far from exhaustive, the list begins to suggest the wide range of factors involved in building and maintaining resilience and its impact on our lives.

The following two examples are very different accounts of individuals fostering resilience:

Mary’s story Mary had an incredibly tough childhood. She lost her mother to cancer, had a verbally abusive father, and had a difficult relationship with her step-mother and much older step-brother (Luthans, Youssef, & Avolio, 2015).

Placed in the foster care system, Mary experienced an early life full of uncertainty and instability. And yet, she tells of a point that changed everything. When a close school friend “challenged her to take control of her life,” she decided, there and then, to “hold onto only those things that could be in her control” (Luthans et al., 2015, p. 147).

Creating her own interpretation of resilience, she gave everything to her education and sports. Excelling at both, she went on to be awarded a full scholarship at a top university. Despite further bumps along the road, she later became a successful bank executive.

Jan’s story Jan arrived in therapy intending to change her behavior to make her boss recognize that his treatment of her was unfair and getting in the way of new opportunities (Pemberton, 2015).

Over several counseling sessions , she became aware that “the powerless victim did not serve her well” or reflect who she really was. Once she realized her resilience was not reliant on her working for the organization and that she had managed many other difficult situations in other areas of her life, she stopped talking and acting like a victim (Pemberton, 2015, p. 36).

Jan learned to tolerate uncertainty and gain self-confidence through adopting a more resilient outlook of “positive emergence” (Pemberton, 2015, p. 36).

Download 3 Free Resilience Exercises (PDF)

These detailed, science-based exercises will equip you or your clients to recover from personal challenges and turn setbacks into opportunities for growth.

Download 3 Free Resilience Tools Pack (PDF)

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As a coach or counselor, it will not be long before you encounter a client whose life has been shaken to the core by events – a death, accident, illness, betrayal, or violence.

Thankfully, it is possible to help those who have experienced trauma, providing support to build the resilience needed to not only survive but ultimately flourish (Southwick & Charney, 2018).

After all, “a survivor and a person demonstrating resilience are not necessarily undergoing the same process of recovery” (Neenan, 2018, p. 8). Someone who survives trauma may be left bitter and consumed with anger, blame, and even guilt, while the resilient person seeks personal growth and a life with meaning.

The term self-righting – a phrase taken from restoring an overturned boat to its upright position in the water – is sometimes used as a metaphor for getting an individual’s life back on track and is especially relevant for the role of the counselor during therapy (Neenan, 2018).

Neenan (2018) describes how the support and advice offered by a trusted mental health professional can considerably reduce the degree and length of the client’s struggle to overcome problems. Resilience is rarely developed in social isolation, and if constructive support is available, it should be taken.

Resilience involves many factors and is underpinned by various support mechanisms; counseling must therefore be appropriate to the needs of the clients and the issues they present.

With multiple approaches available, we consider three broad therapeutic styles that can be used in isolation or combined as necessary (Neenan, 2018; Southwick & Charney, 2018).

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

CBT is a powerful approach for understanding the impact of our thoughts and beliefs on how we feel and act.

CBT is particularly useful when working with clients to build resilience and learn to cope with unpredictable and often unwanted events. CBT interventions for building resilience might best be summed up with the statement, “it is not events, but our beliefs about them, that cause suffering” (Southwick & Charney, 2018, p. 52).

Thoughts and beliefs, such as, “Why me?” or “I’m a failure,” can be replaced with more helpful, sustaining beliefs that encourage resilient thinking and behavior.

However, it is essential to note that CBT is not always the right approach to foster resilience. Timing (the moment the client recognizes that their beliefs may be holding them back) and a willingness to “see themselves as an agent in their own life” are crucial (Southwick & Charney, 2018, p. 64).

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

ACT does not seek to deny the difficulties that bring us suffering; they are inescapable (Southwick & Charney, 2018).

Rather than focusing on changing clients’ beliefs to foster resilience, ACT practitioners encourage their clients to learn to accept discomfort and experience what follows.

Facing reality, rather than withdrawing or seeking to blame others, is vital to ACT. Practicing mindfulness (grounding, in particular) can help clients develop a flexible mindset and learn to accept the present rather than repeatedly re-running thoughts that lead to feelings of rejection, disappointment, or failure.

Solution-focused coaching

Solution-focused coaching has an almost instinctual appeal, possibly due to its apparent simplicity (Southwick & Charney, 2018).

Rather than focusing on helping the client understand their problems, counselors encourage them to uncover how they would feel if their problem were solved and what they currently do that makes them think change is possible.

This innovative approach recognizes that the client is the expert in their lives, not the coach. The client is then helped to uncover the resources they already possess to overcome difficulties they face, building and maintaining resilience.

While these three approaches to building resilience in therapy have proven incredibly helpful, there are others. The resilience exercises and interventions that follow are drawn from many counseling and therapeutic styles and can be beneficial to a variety of clients and situations.

Resiliency field trip: a therapy tool to help you cope with stress – Emily Capito

The following is a selection of some of the many interventions and techniques available to counselors to build resilience in clients.

Understand your resilience

Pemberton (2015) lists three crucial areas that combine to form an individual’s resilience:

Resilience is a capacity partially shaped by innate personality factors.
Factors in the individual’s environment provide protection against the impact of the challenge.
Resilience can be learned through encountering difficulty and hardship.

To gain insight into the relative contribution of each theme, ask your client the following counseling interview questions (modified from Pemberton, 2015):

Would you describe yourself as a naturally optimistic or pessimistic person?
How would your friends describe how you deal with life’s challenges and setbacks?
How easy do you find it to overcome difficulties?
What challenges did you encounter in early life?
What factors helped you with those challenges?
Who believed in you?
What has been your most significant challenge so far?
How did you get yourself through it?
What did you learn from that challenge that you continue to use in your life?

The answers provide a clue regarding what shapes your resilience and what might cause you to (temporarily) lose it.

Practicing solution-focused resilience

Resilience regarding existing challenges can be built by revisiting lessons from similar challenges in the past, reminding the client of what they already know but may have forgotten (Southwick & Charney, 2018).

The Solution-Focused Resilience Template is a practical approach for helping clients (re)discover resources they can draw on for building resilience.

What have you forgotten that you could use now to help you manage or overcome the present situation?

Understanding the Impact of Attitudes on resilience

“Attitudes are evaluations we make of an object, person, group, issue, situation or concept,” and they have three components (Neenan, 2018, p. 19):

Thoughts – What do you think about X?
Emotions – How do you feel about X?
Behavior – How do you act toward X?

Our attitudes and beliefs are powerful influencers on how we behave, positively and negatively. We often benefit from replacing unhelpful or harmful perspectives and viewpoints with ones that are more healthy and helpful. But how?

It is not always easy to change our beliefs; it takes effort and willingness. The Understanding the Impact of Attitudes on Resilience worksheet can help clients see things more clearly by asking questions about their existing beliefs and possible new ones.

Resilient Problem-Solving Skills

Whether our ability or capacity to become more resilient is thwarted by internal blocks (such as fear, anxiety, or anger) or external blocks (such as failing to hit sales targets or meeting financial burden), problem-solving can help (Neenan, 2018).

The ADAPT model is a practical tool that can help clients focus on problem-solving. Why not try out the Resilient Problem-Solving Skills worksheet with your client as a way of exploring possible solutions to the problems they face?

Ask the client to consider the following ADAPT prompts (modified from Neenan, 2018; Demiris et al., 2010):

A = attitude to the situation
D = define the problem and set realistic goals
A = generate alternative solutions
P = predict the likely consequences and develop a solution plan
T = try out the solution and see if it works

You can use the following counseling activities , exercises, and worksheets to understand your client’s resilience and identify ways it can be developed (modified from Pemberton, 2015):

When Was I (Not) Resilient?

The When Was I (Not) Resilient? worksheet provides a helpful way to review situations when you coped well and coped poorly to identify qualities that are more developed than others and the nature of your resilience.

Uncover Your Purpose

Feeling a stronger sense of purpose can help you build and maintain resilience. It can be easier to persevere and push through difficult times when you understand the impact you would like to have on the world (Armstrong, 2019).

The Uncover Your Purpose worksheet can make your life narrative clearer. Discovering your compelling purpose can clarify your focus on overcoming and remaining resilient during challenging life events.

When considering challenges, review your answers to see what consistent themes develop and consider how they foster your resilience.

Creating Realistic Optimism for resilience

Positive emotions (e.g., joy, gratitude, and hope) and negative emotions (e.g., resentment, anger, and fear) influence resilience. Positive emotions can broaden our focus, attention, and behavior, helping us become more creative as we tackle our problems (Southwick & Charney, 2018).

The Creating Realistic Optimism for Resilience worksheet can help you positively appraise a situation that may at first appear negative.

Engaging in more optimistic thinking can help you become more resilient by actively employing more coping strategies to overcome challenging times (Southwick & Charney, 2018).

One-to-one resilience counseling can be highly successful at helping clients adapt to life-changing and stressful situations and even encourage personal growth.

There are also benefits from attending group sessions that offer a support network and the chance to meet others facing similar challenges (Counselling Directory, n.d.).

Group sessions provide the opportunity to learn from and be inspired by others’ narratives and difficulties. Attending counseling with others may help the client develop the optimism and regain the hope essential for building resilience (American Psychological Association, 2012).

17 Tools To Build Resilience and Coping Skills

Empower others with the skills to manage and learn from inevitable life challenges using these 17 Resilience & Coping Exercises [PDF] , so you can increase their ability to thrive.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

We have many resources, including activities, worksheets, and exercises, that help build resilience and cope with life’s uncertainties.

Why not download our free resilience tool pack and try out the powerful tools contained within?

Doors Closed Doors Open A simple but powerful tool to help you reflect on what doors opened as others closed.
Using Values to Build Resilience Here, we use value affirmations to build resilience during stressful life events.

Other free resources include:

It Could Be Worse This thought experiment encourages clients to face the world with increased feelings of gratitude and become more resilient.
Exploring Past Resilience It can be valuable to consider resilience resources and strategies that have helped people overcome adversity in the past so that they may use them again in the future.

More extensive versions of the following tools are available with a subscription to the Positive Psychology Toolkit© , but they are described briefly below:

Step one – Describe a challenging situation.
Step two – Observe your thoughts about the situation.
Step three – Reflect on different styles of coping : active, surrender, passive, and over-control.
Step four – Identify the coping style you are using from your thoughts.
Step five – Assess the helpfulness of your coping style.
Step six – Move toward a more helpful coping style.
Step two – Imagine yourself bouncing back from this situation.
Step three – Describe what your most resilient self might look like.
Step four – Now imagine how you would interview yourself.
Reflect – What were the key takeaways from interviewing yourself?

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others overcome adversity, check out this collection of 17 validated resilience tools for practitioners . Use them to help others recover from personal challenges and turn setbacks into opportunities for growth.

Trauma in our lives is inevitable. While it may not always seem the case, we do have a choice regarding our response.

Counseling can support clients by uncovering their attitudes and beliefs regarding challenging events and encouraging them to adopt more helpful ones. As clients become better at returning from adversity, they will build resilience and be more ready for future life events.

We must remember resilience is not the absence of fear nor the ability to immediately bounce back from difficult times. Instead, it involves flexibility in how we think about challenges and react to stress.

Positive emotions can greatly reduce the length and depth of the struggle to return to a meaningful life or find a new purpose. And resilience should not be considered a solo activity, but rather part of a network of support and encouragement.

Why not support your client with some of the resilience techniques and activities in this article, encouraging them to adopt new attitudes?

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Resilience Exercises for free .

American Psychological Association. (2012, January 1). Building your resilience. Retrieved October 22, 2021, from https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience
Armstrong, A. (2019). Resilience club: Daily success habits of long-term high performers . Rethink Press.
Counselling Directory. (n.d.). Group therapy. Retrieved October 22, 2021, from https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/group-therapy.html
Demiris, G., Parker Oliver, D., Washington, K., Fruehling, L. T., Haggarty-Robbins, D., Doorenbos, A., … Berry, D. (2010). A problem solving intervention for hospice caregivers: A pilot study. Journal of Palliative Medicine , 13 (8), 1005–1011.
Luthans, F., Youssef, C. M., & Avolio, B. J. (2015). Psychological capital and beyond . Oxford University Press.
Neenan, M. (2018). Developing resilience: A cognitive-behavioural approach . Routledge.
Pemberton, C. (2015). Resilience: A practical guide for coaches . Open University Press.
Southwick, S. M., & Charney, D. S. (2018). Resilience: The science of mastering life’s greatest challenges . Cambridge University Press.

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Thank you. This is such a helpful tool, especially with these challenging times.

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Very informative for an upcoming counsellor

Life can be challenging. But it all down to individual on how they can creat that circle and make it a living. Yes it can be ups and downs but one thing is sure is how you see the whole picture.

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Life Skills Worksheets

Customize life skills templates.

If you're assigning this to your students, copy the worksheet to your account and save. When creating an assignment, just select it as a template!

What are Life Skills?

They are a set of essential abilities and competencies that enable individuals to effectively navigate and succeed in various aspects of life. These skills are not specific to any particular subject or academic discipline but rather focus on personal, social, and emotional development. Skills to use in life empower individuals to cope with everyday challenges, make informed decisions, and lead fulfilling lives.

Using Life Skills Worksheets in the Classroom

In today's rapidly changing world, equipping students with essential skills is crucial for their personal growth and future success. One effective method to achieve this is through the integration of life skills worksheets into the classroom setting. These printable life skills worksheets cover a wide range of topics and are readily available as free life skills worksheets. By engaging in various activities, students can gain a deeper understanding of the practical applications of these skills.

The Importance of Life Skills in Education

These skills encompass a variety of abilities, from problem-solving and critical thinking to social skills and self-awareness. They are essential for personal development and are indispensable in navigating challenges. By using life skills worksheets for kids, educators can create a supportive and engaging environment that promotes the acquisition of these important life skills. By discussing types of skills with students, they can develop a better understanding of how these skills are relevant in various aspects of our lives. Life skills activities worksheets and interactive discussions can provide a well-rounded learning experience that ensures students learn and retain these essential abilities. Transition activities, such as role-playing and collaborative projects, enable students to apply their knowledge and skills in real situations.

Tips for Making a Life Skills Worksheet

Select a Relevant Life Skill: Choose a specific life skill that aligns with your objectives, such as communication or problem-solving, to teach students practical skills.
Define Learning Outcomes: Clearly outline what you want students to learn from the worksheet and how it ties into the broader concept of what are life skills.
Craft Real-World Scenarios: Develop relatable scenarios that showcase an example in action, enabling students to see their relevance in everyday situations.
Design Interactive Activities: Create engaging exercises and discussions that encourage participation and stimulate critical thinking, aligning with life skills activities worksheets.
Incorporate Visuals: Use visuals like charts, images, or diagrams to enhance comprehension and create a visually appealing worksheet.
Encourage Reflection and Application: Include questions that prompt students to reflect on how they can apply the learned life skill in their lives, fostering practical understanding of how to teach life skills.
Tailor to Student Needs: Adapt the worksheet's complexity and language to suit the grade level and individual learning styles, ensuring it caters to life skills for students.

Creating a worksheet involves strategically designing activities and content that resonate with students, promoting active engagement and effective learning outcomes.

How to Make a Life Skills Worksheet

Choose one of the premade templates.

We have lots of templates to choose from. Take a look at our example for inspiration!

Click on “Copy Template”

Once you do this, you will be directed to the storyboard creator.

Give Your Worksheet a Name!

Be sure to call it something related to the topic so that you can easily find it in the future.

Edit Your Worksheet

This is where you will include directions, specific images, and make any aesthetic changes that you would like. The options are endless!

Click "Save and Exit"

When you are finished, click this button in the lower right hand corner to exit your storyboard.

From here you can print, download as a PDF, attach it to an assignment and use it digitally, and more!

Happy Creating!

Frequently Asked Questions About Life Skills

How do life skills differ from academic skills.

They each serve distinct purposes. Life skills are practical abilities for navigating daily life, encompassing emotional intelligence, interpersonal skills, and personal well-being. They're versatile, applied across situations, and contribute to long-term success and happiness. In contrast, academic skills are subject-specific and cognitive, focusing on critical thinking, knowledge acquisition, and preparing individuals for exams and specialized careers. While life skills empower individuals for various life domains, academic skills lay the foundation for educational and career pursuits. Incorporating practical exercises and real scenarios into lesson plans is an effective approach for educators to demonstrate how to teach these skills and empower students with essential abilities.

Are there any cultural differences to consider in teaching the importance of life skills?

Yes, cultural differences can influence how they are perceived and taught. Values, norms, and priorities vary across cultures, affecting which skills are emphasized. For instance, communication styles, problem-solving approaches, and even financial literacy priorities can differ. It's crucial to consider cultural context to ensure that what you are teaching is relevant and resonates with the values and needs of each community. Customizing the approach can enhance the effectiveness of teaching the importance of these skills and promote their meaningful application in diverse cultural contexts.

Is there a link between life skills and personal success?

Yes, there is a strong link between the two. Life skills equip individuals with the practical abilities and emotional intelligence needed to navigate challenges, build positive relationships, and make informed decisions. Mastering communication, problem-solving, time management, and other skills enhances adaptability, resilience, and overall well-being. These skills are essential for achieving goals, managing stress, and maintaining positive mental health. They contribute to personal growth, enabling individuals to excel in their careers, foster fulfilling relationships, and lead balanced, successful lives.

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What are problem solving activities?

The success of a company or organization depends heavily on the managers’ ability to help workers develop their problem solving skills. Problem solving activities that address areas such as teamwork and cooperation, adaptability or reinforcement of decision-making strategies help.

All processes of problem solving begin with the identification of the problem. The team will then evaluate the possible course of action and select the best way to tackle it. This needs a profound understanding of your team and its core strengths.

Not only among corporates, but problem solving activities find their use in educational settings as well. Students who are good at solving problems will become much more successful than those who are not. Remote work and education are on the rise.

Enabling smooth interpersonal communication to solve problems can become a task in these situations. However, engaging all the people concerned in problem solving activities before shifting to the remote space can ease the process.

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Key skills evaluated in problem solving activities

Problem solving skills refer to the necessary thinking skills that an individual or group uses when met with a challenge. Many issues require the use of several skills; others are easy and may require only one or two skills. These are some skills that help to solve problems,

Communication skills
Decision-making skills
Analytical thinking
Negotiation skills
Logical reasoning
Persistence
Lateral thinking

Problem solving skill examples

Several problems occur at the workplace. Problem solving skills can be technical problems that occur on websites or apps or addressing client concerns. Problems could be simple or complex. Business managers spend time and resources to solve problems.

They encourage their team to improve their analytical and logical abilities. Common issues in companies can be exploding data or changing technology, or financial management.

Did you know? Emotional intelligence plays a crucial role in problem solving!

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Problem solving scenarios

Many problem solving scenarios occur at work. The basis to solve any problem is to evaluate and arrive at a solution. Analytical skill or problem solving ability is a skill many employers evaluate while hiring candidates.

Strong problem solving skills can be an asset to any organization. Organizations organize problem and solution activities to improve the problem solving abilities in the workplace.

1. Decision making games

Businesses are looking for new and innovative ways to stimulate their staff. Decision making games help employees to learn new skills and work effectively as a team. Decision making activities help to improve the creative problem solving and decision-making skills of the team. Here are some best Decision-making games,

1. Dumb Idea first – This game gives a hypothetical problem that could occur in your company. Ask each manager to think of the dumbest solution to the problem. After compiling the list of the ideas, the team reviews them.

You have a brainstorming session to make the “dumb ideas” feasible. This problem solving exercise underlines the importance of out-of-box thinking.

Benefits: Decision-making skill

Time duration: 10 to 15 minutes

Team size: 2 to more team managers

Material: Paper and pencil

2. Egg Drop Idea – The objective of the game is to build a container to protect the egg when dropped from a specified height using the material provided. Each team nominates a presenter who explains why the egg will survive the fall.

Once they have presented the idea, the team drops the egg to check if the idea has worked. Egg drop pyramid activities like the marshmallow challenge help teams to think on their feet.

Benefit: Decision-making skill and is a top problem solving skill example

Time duration: 15 – 30 minutes

Team size: 6 or more

Material: A cartoon of eggs, aprons to protect clothes, material for packing (cardboard, tape, elastics, plastic straws, etc.), material to clean up.

Instructions:

Every team gets an egg and should choose from the building materials.
Grant everyone 20-30 minutes to build an egg carrier and guard against breaking.
Remove each egg carrier from a ledge (that is, over a balcony) to see which carrier prevents it from cracking.
If several eggs survive, continue to heighten until only one egg remains.

3. Dog, Rice, and Chicken – The dog, rice, and chicken game can be fun decision-making activities for adults. In this game, one team member plays the farmer, and the other team members are villagers who advise him. The farmer has to take three items chicken, dog, and rice across the river by boat.

There are the following constraints:- only one item can be carried on the boat. He cannot leave the chicken and dog alone because the dog will eat the chicken. He cannot leave the chicken alone with the rice because the chicken will eat the rice grains.

Benefit: creative problem solving examples that are applicable at work.

Time duration: 10-15 minutes.

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2. Teambuilding puzzle

Team building exercises are fun and creative ways to get your team to work together and improve problem solving skills.

1. Lost at Sea – In this game, you and your friends have chattered a yacht to sail across the Atlantic Ocean. Since you do not have any navigation experience, you hire a captain and a two-person crew. Unfortunately, the crew and captain die when a fire breaks out on the yacht.

The yacht is severally damaged and is sinking. You and your friends have managed to save 15 items and a lifeboat. Your task is to rank the 15 items while you are waiting to be rescued. The activity lost at sea team building underlines the importance of problem solving skills in the workplace.

Benefits: Team building exercise and interaction

Time duration: 30 to 40 minutes

Team size: 4 to 6

Material: Lost in sea ranking for interaction chart for each member

2. Marshmallow Spaghetti Tower – The marshmallow team-building activities have the goal of building the tallest tower as quickly as possible. To make the task more challenging the marshmallow is placed at the top of the tower. This is a fun puzzle activity for team building.

Benefit: Teambuilding puzzle

Time duration: 30 minutes

Material required: 20 sticks on raw uncooked spaghetti, a marshmallow, masking thread, and yarn of thread.

3. Go for Gold – This is an example of a marshmallow challenge similar to activities. The objective of this exercise is to create a structure using pipes, rubber tubing, and cardboard to carry a marble from point A to point B using gravity.

Benefit: team building problem solving scenario examples

Team size: Minimum 6 persons

Material required: Each member has different material

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3. Work Problem Solving

Work problem solving activities help to use the skills you used in problem solving activities in your workplace.

1. Create your own – this game aims to create a brand new problem solving activity for the organization. The team can brainstorm for 1 hour. After one hour each team has to give a presentation about their activity outlining the key benefits.

Benefit: Understanding the problem solving process. Build creativity, improve negotiation, and Decision-making skills

When the participants arrive, you declare that they will create an original problem solving activity on their own, rather than spending an hour on an existing problem solving team-building exercise.
Divide members into teams and encourage them to develop a new problem solving team-building exercise that will fit well with the organization. The activity should not be one they have engaged in or heard of before.
Every team has to show their new activity to everyone else after an hour and outline the main benefits.

2. Shrinking Vessel – make a shape on the floor using a rope where all the team members can fit. Reduce the size every 10 -15 minutes. The real challenge for the team is figuring out how to work together and keep everyone together.

Benefits: Adaptability and cognitive diversity

Material: Rope and large room

Place on the floor a big circle of rope. Position your whole team inside the circle.
Lessen the circle size steadily. When it gets smaller, advise the team to keep the entire team inside the circle. Nobody must move out of the loop. See how small you can make the area until it cannot remain inside.

3. Legoman – the team is divided into groups of two or more people. Select an impartial individual who will make a structure in 10 minutes. Each team will compete to recreate it in fifteen minutes. Only one person is allowed to see the structure. They need to communicate vital parameters like color, shape, and size.

Benefits: Communication

Tools: Lego

4. What Would X Do – This problem solving activity stimulates teams to think of new ideas.

Benefits: Instant problem solving
Time Duration: 10-15 minutes
Materials Required: N/A
Let every team pretend to be someone famous.
Every team needs to address the issue as if they were a famous person. Which are the choices they would consider? How will they do this?
It helps all to consider options they may not have initially thought of.

Tip: Before you decide, a problem is worth solving, weigh the risks of solving it versus not solving it.

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4. Team building riddles

Team building riddles are a great way to show the team group problem solving is usually more effective.

1. Barter puzzle – the team is broken into groups. Give each team a different jigsaw puzzle to solve. The groups have to complete the puzzle at the same time. The twist in the game is that some pieces of their puzzle belong to other puzzles.

The goal is to complete the puzzle before the other teams. Each group has to come with their method to convince other teams to handover the pieces they need, either by bartering pieces or donating time to the other teams. This puzzle piece team-building activity helps teams to collaborate.

Benefit: Team building and negotiating.

Material: Jigsaw puzzle for each team

Time: 30 minutes

2. Scavenger Hunt – in this game, each team has a list of the article to locate and bring back. The goal of the game is to finish the assigned list first. In the scavenger hunt, the team has a time limit to make the game more challenging. You have the flexibility of having the hunt outside or within the premises. The team-building puzzle game helps the team to look for creative solutions.

3. Escape – the goal is to solve clues and find the key to unlock the door in a limited time. Hide the key and a list of clues around the room. The team has 30 to 60 minutes to figure out the clues and unlock the door.

Benefit: Team building exercise

Material: Rope, key, lockable room, 5 to 10 puzzles

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5. Work together problems

Work together on problems helps to underline the need to collaborate while solving issues at work. Group challenge activities help the team work well together.

1. Bonding belt – each group is divided into 5 to 6 participants, who are bound together with rope or tape so that their movements are limited. The team has to reach from point A to point B, and the time is recorded. The teams collaborate to beat their previous score.

Benefits: Helps the team to collaborate and skills for problem solving scenario/

Time: 20 to 30 minutes

Material: Cling film, belt, or rope

2. Scramble puzzle – the team members with blindfolds sit in a circle with the puzzle. The teammate without the blindfold sits outside the circle, with their back to the group. The blindfolded group tries to assemble the pieces of the puzzle. The outsider who has the same puzzle gives the team instructions to solve it.

Benefits: trust, leadership, and communication

Material: Preschool-level puzzles and blindfolds.

3. Flip it over – this is a classic work-together problem. In this game, 6 to 8 participants stand together on a blanket/towel/tarp. The challenge is to flip over the blanket or reverse it. The rule is that none of the participants can leave the blanket.

Benefit: Work together exercise

Duration: 30 minutes

Material: Blanket

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6. Team building survival games

Team building survival games helps to fine-tune problem solving scenarios that may occur at work. The activities encourage creative problem solving and decision making.

1. Stranded – Stranded helps in building effective communication. In this setting, the team is stranded in an office. The rooms will be locked, and doors and windows cannot be broken down. The team is asked to make a list of 10 items that they need to survive.

They need to rank items in the order of their importance. The team has to agree on the items and the order. Stranded is one of several popular survival team-building exercises.

Benefit: Team building and Decision-making exercises

Your team is stuck inside the building. Doors are closed, so there is no option to kick down the doors or smash the windows.
Grant the team 30 minutes to determine what ten things they need to thrive in the office and list them in order of importance.
The goal of the game is to get everyone to agree in 30 minutes about the ten things and their ranking.

2. Minefield – you randomly place items around the room or hallway and there is no clear path from one end of the room to another. The team is divided into pairs. One team member is blindfolded, and the other team member is the guide.

The guide navigates the blindfolded person across the minefield. The two partners cannot touch. This survival team-building activity underlines the need for clear communication.

Benefits: Communication and collaborative problem solving

Duration: 10-15 minutes

Material: Blindfold, empty room or hallway, and collection of random items.

3. Frostbite – in this survival scenario team-building exercise the team is trapped in Siberia. Each team has to elect a team captain. The team has to build a storm shelter with the material provided.

The twist in the game is the team captains cannot help physically since they have frostbite. Other team members are suffering snow blindness and are blindfolded. The electric fan will be turned on in 30 minutes to see if the shelter built will survive the storm.

Benefit: Leadership, skills action plan, and team building survival games

Team size: 4 to 5 members

Material: An electric fan, blindfold, simple building materials like cardboard paper, rubber bands, toothpicks, masking tape, straws, sticky notes, etc.

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7. Group decision making games

Group decision making games help encourage creative problem solving and decision making at work. Here is a bunch of group decision making games

1. Reverse Pyramid – the team members stand in a pyramid shape. The next step is to flip the base and apex of the pyramid. The limiting factor in only three persons can move.

Benefits: Group Decision-making and collaboration

2. Tower of Hanoi – in this game, there are three towers/posts/rods with 5 or more discs arranged conical shape with the smallest shape at the top. The objective of the game is to move the entire stack to another location retaining the shape. Some conditions of the games are only one disc can be moved at a time. Only the top disc can be moved. Another rule of the game is larger disc cannot be put on a smaller disc.

Benefits: This team-building exercise helps problem solving within the participants.

3. Human Knot – the team stands in a circle every person holds hands with a person not standing next to them. When everyone is cross-connected, the aim is to untangle the structure without letting go of anybody’s hand.

Benefit: group problem solving

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8. Funny problem solving games

We need to solve problems for personal and professional lives. Funny problem solving exercises are a light way. Funny problem solving can help reduce stress levels.

1. Pencil drop – in the pencil drop challenge, one end of the pencil is tied to a pencil and the other is tied around the waist of a team member. The other team member puts the pencil into the bottle placed below. The participants are not allowed to use their hands.

Benefit: Team bonding

Team size: 2 members each

Material: Some pencil and bottle

2. Blind drawing – this game requires two players to sit back to back. One participant describes an image in front of them without giving stating anything obvious. The other participant needs to draw it using the description. The outcome can be fun.

3. Be the character – in this activity, you pretend to be an imaginary character while trying to solve a problem. This game gives a unique perspective on your solution and whether the solution is feasible for other members.

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9. Group problem solving activities for adults

Group problem solving activities are very efficient, especially for adults. These can be used in any setting to enhance problem solving skills.

1. Human Knots

Benefits: Communication skills, collaboration
Time Duration: 10 – 15 minutes.

This is one of the most straightforward group problem solving activities that can be done with any group. It facilitates communication and critical thinking in the face of a challenging and complex question. Various group members will possibly suggest a variety of solutions, and each will need to be reviewed and adopted by the organization as a whole.

Have the group stand in a small circle (make several circles when you are a larger group). Every person in the loop will hold the hands of 2 other people who are not directly next to them. That would make a messy crossed arms knot.
Ask the group to disentangle themselves without moving their hands at any point in time. They may be unable to disentangle completely to form a circle again. Still, they would have begun to work together to solve the problem by the end of the activity.

2. Frostbite

Benefits: Leadership, decision-making, trust, adaptability
Time Duration: 30 minutes.
Materials Required: An electric fan, blindfold, simple building materials like cardboard paper, rubber bands, toothpicks, masking tape, straws, sticky notes, etc.

Your group is trapped in the barren deserts of Siberia, and a sudden winter storm is approaching. You have to create a shelter with only the materials in hand that can survive the storm’s harsh winds. The leader of your expedition was afflicted with frostbite in both hands, sadly, and all the others experience severe snow blindness.

Divide the group into clusters of 4-5. Every group will have to elect a chief.
Group leaders are not allowed to use their hands to support the group in any way, and group members should be blindfolded during the exercise.
The groups have 30 minutes to build a small tent structure that can withstand the wind from the fan’s highest location.

3. Dumbest Idea First

Benefits: Critical thinking, creative problem solving, quick problem solving
Time Duration: 15 – 20 minutes
Materials Required: Pen or pencil, a piece of paper.

Dumbest Idea First is one of the most creative problem solving activities for groups. This can encourage your creativity by thinking out of the box and lead you to ideas that would typically sound too insane to work. You can broaden the possibilities by looking at these crazy solutions first, and find potential alternatives that might not be as obvious.

Present your team with a question. It could be a real-world dilemma facing the group, or it could be a created scenario. For example, your company attempts to beat a rival to win a high-paying customer contract, but the customer bends to your competitors. You have a short period before they make the final decision to change their mind.
With the given question, advise your group to come up with the dumbest ideas to tackle the issue. Anything can be written down.
After each person has put forward a few ideas, go through the list, and analyze each plan to see which are the most feasible. List them from the highest level of feasibility to the lowest level.

4. Wool Web

Benefits: Leadership, communication
Time Duration: 30 minutes
Materials Required: Some balls of yarn.

As hard as replicating the magnitude of the real-world problems is, that is no excuse not to try! Wool web creates a dilemma that appears complicated at first, but groups will learn to break down complicated challenges into solvable problems one move at a time.

This happens by using the right strategy and working together. Undoubtedly, this is one of the most stimulating problem solving activities for adults.

Split the group into similarly large teams. Every time, it receives a yarn ball.
Tell each team to turn the yarn ball into a vast web. Give them around 5-10 minutes to do this. When done, rotate all the teams so that every team is on a yarn web they have not set up.
Every group must choose one person to untangle the web. That individual would be blindfolded and be guided by the rest of the team on how to unwind the web using only verbal instructions. The first team to achieve it wins the game.

5. Tallest Tower

Benefits: Creative thinking, collaboration
Materials Required: 1 bag of marshmallows, one packet of uncooked spaghetti.

Simple building projects can help group members create strategies to overcome box issues. Tallest Tower is another one of the most creative problem solving activities. Groups will compete with only two materials to make the tallest tower in a fixed period.

Divide the group into two, which have an equal number of players. Provide 20 – 30 uncooked spaghetti noodles and 3-4 marshmallows to every team.
Groups must compete in the provided period to build the tallest tower using only the materials supplied. A marshmallow has to be set at the top of the tower.

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10. Problem solving activities for students

Below is a bunch of problem solving activities for students and kids,

1. Brainstorm Bonanza – Brainstorm Bonanza is one of the best problem solving activities for students. As a teacher, making your students create lists relevant to something you are teaching at the moment can be a fantastic way to help them expand their knowledge of a subject when learning to solve problems.

Benefits: Problem solving
Materials Required: Pen and paper

1. If you are discussing a real, current, or fictional occurrence that did not work out well, let your students imagine ways that the protagonist or participants might have produced a better, more favorable result.

2. They can brainstorm independently or in groups.

2. Clue Me In – this is one of the most enjoyable problem solving games. It facilitates logical thinking and cognitive development.

Benefits: Cognitive development, logical thinking
Time Duration: 20 minutes
Materials Required: A bag, clues, items as necessary
Select a collection of things relating to a specific occupation, social phenomenon, historical incident, object, etc.
Assemble individual objects (or pictures of things) commonly linked to the target response.
Place all of them in a bag (five-10 clues ought to be enough).
Then, have a student reach into the bag and take out clues one by one.
Select a minimum number of clues to draw before they make their first guess (two-three).
After that, the student should guess, pulling each clue until they think it is right.
See how quickly the student can solve the riddle.

3. Survivor Scenario – Create a hypothetical situation that allows students to think creatively to make it through. One example may be being stuck on an island, realizing that three days of help would not come.

The community has a small amount of food and water and has to establish shelter from the island’s objects. This would undoubtedly be one of the fascinating problem solving activities for students.

Benefits: Logical thinking, collaboration
Encourage working together as a group.
Listen to each student who has an idea about making it safe and secure across the three days.

4. Moral Dilemmas – Create several potential moral dilemmas that your students can face in life, write down, and place each object in a bowl or container. These things may include items like, “I’ve seen a good friend of mine shoplifting. What is it that I would do?” or “The cashier gave me an additional $1.50 in change after I purchased candy from the shop. What is it that I would do?”

Benefits: Logical thinking
Time Duration: 5 minutes per student
Materials Required: Container, bits of paper with moral dilemmas written
Ask every student to draw an item from the bag one after the other and read it aloud.
They must then tell the class the response on the spot as to how they would handle the situation.

5. Problem solving box – this is an activity that will help on both cognitive and emotional levels for students.

Benefits: Logical thinking, decision making
Materials Required: Box, paper, pen
Have your students design and decorate a medium-sized box with a top slot. Name it as the “Problem Solving Box.”
Invite students to write down anonymously and apply any concerns or problems they may have at school or at home, which they do not appear to be able to work out on their own.
Let a student draw one of the things from the box once or twice a week, and read it aloud.
Finally, as a group, let the class work out the best way students can approach the problem and eventually solve it.

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11. Problem solving activities for kids

Below is a bunch of problem solving activities for kids,

1. Puzzle-solving – Solving puzzles is one of the best problem solving activities for kids out there. Essentially, every puzzle is a big collection of muddled-up items to figure out and bring back together again.

Kids must be introduced to puzzles with regularity. These are useful for improving skills in reasoning. The best kinds to choose from are wooden puzzles with a wooden frame. They last long, and the structure serves as the foundation to direct children during construction.

Benefits: Reasoning skills
Time Duration: Varies
Materials Required: Puzzles according to the age level

Instructions:

Show the kids a demo of how a particular puzzle can be solved.
Then, let them choose a puzzle of their liking from the available choices.
Ask them to solve their chosen puzzles.

2. Memory Games – Memory games will improve memory and attention to detail for your child.

Benefits: Attention to detail
Materials Required: Matching pairs of images
Using matching pairs of images and turn them all face down, shuffled, on a table.
Take turns to pick any two cards, and face them on the table.
You hold the cards if you turn over a similar pair, and if the pair does not match, turn the cards over before it is your turn to try again.
A teacher/parent must encourage the kids to concentrate on where the pictures are, and seek to find a matching pair on each turn.

3. Building games – Construction toys like building blocks, wooden blocks, or legos should be a staple in a kid’s home every day. Playing with them is one of the most fun problem solving activities for kids. Anything that your child builds is a challenge as it involves thinking about what to create and how to put together the parts to get a workable and usable design.

Benefits: Decision making
Materials Required: Construction toys.

1. Let your child build a challenge openly and often, and ask him/her to build a particular structure, with conditions. For instance:

Create two towers with a bridge that connects them.
Create a creature that stands alone and has three arms.

2. Observe how your child uses trial-and-error before finding a way to bring the idea into motion.

4. Tic-Tac-Toe – this is an excellent game for teaching decision-making skills. It encourages kids to think before they act and weigh the potential consequences.

Materials Required: Pencil, paper
Draw a simple tic-tac-toe table on paper or chalkboard.
Take turns to add a nought or a cross to the table to see who is the first to make a line of three.
Your kid will likely catch on in no time before placing their symbol and start thinking carefully.
Coloured counters or different items can be used to play this game as well.

5. Building a Maze – This activity is fun and fits for any age. It will also be a lot more enjoyable than doing a maze in an activity book, particularly for younger kids.

Materials Required: Chalk
Draw a big maze with jumbo chalk on the paving. Make passages, including one or two, which end in an impasse. Teach your kid how to get out of it.
Make the maze more complicated and add more dead-end passages as your child gets better at figuring out a path and finding the way out.

Also Read: Developing a blockchain – hire an expert blockchain developer now!

What is a problem solving process?

When a team or person faces an issue or obstacle, it can be tempting to quickly track a potential solution and set up a fast fix. This could happen without understanding the complexity of the problem and pursuing a systematic approach to seeking a solution.

The attempts to address issues or obstacles may become unstructured and frustrating without a consistent method. End-to-end processes for problem solving offer a mechanism for a community to tackle any size or nature, and see results. Problem solving activities for adults, kids, and students can help make the problem solving process very useful.

Army problem solving process

There are 7 steps to problem solving army model,

Recognize and define the problem – The first step army problem solving process is defining the problem precisely and determining the root cause.
Gather facts and make assumptions – You need to gather all information you have at your disposal. Common resources for information may be documentation and policies. Assumptions are unsubstantiated facts. Use facts rather than assumptions when you need to analyze the scope of the problem.
Generate alternatives – One of the key steps in military problem solving is finding ways to solve the problem. Ideally, it best to have multiple approaches to solve the problem. Take input from peers and subordinates if possible.
Analyze possible solutions – Analyze each possible solution with advantages and disadvantages. You evaluate each solution according to screening and feasibility criteria. Reject the solution when it fails in the screening process.
Compare Alternatives – Another crucial step in the army problem solving model is to evaluate alternatives for cost and benefits. You need to consider your experience and immediate future. Tabulating each solution with the pros and cons will help clear the picture.
Make an executive your decision – Make a decision and prepare an action plan, and put it in motion.
Assess the result – You need to monitor the implementation of the plan and modify it if required. Establishing critical steps and milestones will help to ensure success.

Army problem solving games

Capture the flag – the game helps in team building and army problem solving. Two teams compete against one another to retrieve a flag or object from the opposing team camp base and get into their camp base. This game is flexible, and ground rules need to be set before the game starts.
Paintball – Paintball is a fun military problem solving activity. You can have many modifications and variations of the paintball game. The aim is to fire paint pellets at the opposing team. Laser tag is another variation of the game.
Firing blind – Firing blind is a game where each team has a large number of water balloons. At the other end of the field has to hit the target is protected by a tarp from direct firing. The team has to hit the target that is covered. One team member acts as the observer and directs the team to hit the target with the water balloons.

Also Read: Interested in NFT – find an expert NFT consultant now!

Obstacles to problem solving

Problem solving can take time and patience, one of the best ways to solve any problem is pausing and evaluating the problem. Obstacles to problem solving are,

Misdiagnosis – Misdiagnosis is a common problem can occur due to preconceived idea, biases or judgments. Defining and having a concrete understanding of the problem is the first step in the problem solving activity. This can be difficult. If you are not careful, you may spend your time and resources solving the wrong problem and finding the wrong solution.
Communication bias – Communication barriers are caused when we are unable to explain the problem to the team, or presuming we know more than everyone else. Everyone on the team must be on the same page. You may need to acknowledge you have a limited understanding of the problem.
Solution bias – A common obstacle in problem solving is thinking there may be a universal solution or thinking the same solution can solve multiple problems. You need to evaluate a problem independently than try to force-fit a solution that worked previously.
Cognitive bias – One of the barriers to finding an effective solution is cognitive bias, or the tendency to jump to conclusions. To find solutions fast firms often end up with an irrelevant solution. This may cause more problems down the line.
Lack of empathy – Every problem is associated with human emotions or abilities. It is important to identify and recognize people affected by the problem or it will be difficult to find a solution that will solve help.

Also Read: Developing an NFT – hire an expert NFT developer now!

Famous virtual problem solving software

Traditionally watercoolers chat is a great way to bring people together and help team members interact with one another. A virtual water cooler has a similar concept where people interact in a similar virtual setting or a dedicated virtual room. It allows remote teams to bond. Software that offers virtual water coolers services,

unremot.com – provides users with a unique water cooler experience. The app provides unique solutions to remote teams.
Microsoft Teams
Informal Whatsapp group
Donut over slack channels

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Life Skills Lesson - Life Skills Worksheets - PROBLEM SOLVING SKILLS

What educators are saying

Description.

Life Skills Activities Special Education

PROBLEM SOLVING SKILLS

Objectives: Students will be able to:

· Define problem solving.

· Explain why problem-solving skills are important.

· Describe the IDEAL process for solving problems.

· Apply problem solving strategies to solve a problem.

INTRO TO INDEPENDENT LIVING SKILLS

PERSISTENCE - BEING PERSISTENT

RESPECT - BEING RESPECTFUL

Your Support and Feedback are Greatly Appreciated.

Sincerely, SLC Education

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The importance of problem-solving skills in today’s workplace

According to a 2019 report by McKinsey , soft skills are increasingly important in today's world — and problem-solving is the top area in which skills are lacking. A company or team’s success weighs heavily on the willingness of managers to help employees improve their problem-solving abilities. Team building activities targeting focus areas like communication and collaboration, adaptability, or strengthening decision-making techniques help.

All problem-solving processes start with identifying the problem. Next, the team must assess potential courses of action and choose the best way to tackle the problem. This requires a deep understanding of your team and its core strengths. A problem-solving exercise or game helps identify those strengths and builds problem-solving skills and strategies while having fun with your team.

Problem-solving games aren't for just any team. Participants must have an open mind and accept all ideas and solutions . They must also have an Agile mindset and embrace different structures, planning, and processes. Problems usually arise when we least expect them, so there's no better way to prepare than to encourage agility and flexibility.

Another aspect to keep in mind when engaging in problem-solving games and activities: There are no winners or losers. Sure, some games might end with a single winner, but the true goal of these exercises is to learn how to work together as a team to develop an Agile mindset. The winning team of each game should share their strategies and thought processes at the end of the exercise to help everyone learn.

Here’s a list of fun problem-solving activity examples to try with your team. From blindfolds to raw eggs, these problem-solving, team-building activities will have your team solving problems faster than Scooby and the gang.

Classic team-building, problem-solving activities

1. a shrinking vessel.

Helps with: Adaptability

Why adaptability is important for problem-solving: Adaptability is highly associated with cognitive diversity, which helps teams solve problems faster , according to the Harvard Business Review. Innovation and disruption are happening faster than ever before . People, teams, and organizations that can adapt will come out on top.

What you’ll need:

A rope or string

Instructions:

1. Using the rope, make a shape on the floor everyone can fit into.

2. Slowly shrink the space over 10-15 minutes.

3. Work together to figure out how to keep everyone within the shrinking boundaries.

2. Marshmallow Spaghetti Tower

Helps with: Collaboration

Why collaboration is important for problem-solving: “Collectively, we can be more insightful, more intelligent than we can possibly be individually,” writes Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline . We can solve problems better as a team than we can alone, which means developing your team’s collaboration skills will lead to better problem-solving outcomes.

What you’ll need (per team):

20 sticks of uncooked spaghetti
1 roll of masking tape
1 yard of string
1 marshmallow

1. The goal of this exercise is to see which team can use the materials provided to build the tallest tower within an allotted time period. The tower must be able to stand on its own.

2. To make this exercise more challenging, try adding a marshmallow to the top of the tower. This team problem-solving exercise helps people think on their toes while building camaraderie and leadership.

3. Egg Drop

Helps with: Collaboration, decision-making

Why decision-making is important for problem-solving: Making decisions isn’t easy , but indecision leads to team paralysis, stagnant thinking, and unsolved problems. Decision-making activities help your team practice making quick, effective choices. Train your team’s decision-making muscles and they will become more adept at problem-solving.

A carton of eggs
Basic construction materials such as newspapers, straws, tape, plastic wrap, balloons, rubber bands, popsicle sticks, etc., tarp, or drop cloth
A parking lot, or some other place you don’t mind getting messy!

1. Each team gets an egg and must select from the construction materials.

2. Give everyone 20-30 minutes to construct a carrier for the egg and protect it from breaking.

3. Drop each egg carrier off a ledge (i.e. over a balcony) and see whose carrier protects the egg from breaking.

4. If multiple eggs survive, keep increasing the height until only one egg is left.

4. Stranded

Helps with: Communication, decision-making

Why communication is important for problem-solving: More employees work remotely than ever before. Good communication skills are vital to solving problems across virtual teams . Working on communication skills while your team is together will help them solve problems more effectively when they’re apart.

Here's the setting: Your team has been stranded in the office. The doors are locked, and knocking down the doors or breaking the windows is not an option. Give your team 30 minutes to decide on ten items in the office they need for survival and rank them in order of importance. The goal of the game is to have everyone agree on the ten items and their rankings in 30 minutes.

Creative problem-solving activities

Helps with: Communication

What you'll need:

1. Divide everyone into small teams of two or more.

2. Select an overseer who isn't on a team to build a random structure using Lego building blocks within ten minutes.

3. The other teams must replicate the structure exactly (including size and color) within 15 minutes. However, only one member from each group may look at the original structure. They must figure out how to communicate the size, color, and shape of the original structure to their team.

4. If this is too easy, add a rule that the member who can see the original structure can't touch the new structure.

A lockable room
5-10 puzzles or clues (depending on how much time you want to spend on the game)

1. The goal of this exercise is to solve the clues, find the key, and escape a locked room within the time allotted.

2. Hide the key and a list of clues around the room.

3. Gather the team into the empty room and "lock" the door.

4. Give them 30 minutes to an hour to find the key using the clues hidden around the room.

7. Frostbite

Helps with: Decision-making, adaptability

A blindfold
1 packet of construction materials (such as card stock, toothpicks, rubber bands, and sticky notes) for each team
An electric fan

Instructions: Your employees are Arctic explorers adventuring across an icy tundra! Separate them into teams of four or five and have them select a leader to guide their exploration. Each team must build a shelter from the materials provided before the storm hits in 30 minutes. However, both the team leader’s hands have frostbite, so they can’t physically help construct the shelter, and the rest of the team has snow blindness and is unable to see. When the 30 minutes is up, turn on the fan and see which shelter can withstand the high winds of the storm.

8. Minefield

An empty room or hallway
A collection of common office items

1. Place the items (boxes, chairs, water bottles, bags, etc.) around the room so there's no clear path from one end of the room to the other.

2. Divide your team into pairs and blindfold one person on the team.

3. The other must verbally guide that person from one end of the room to the other, avoiding the "mines."

4. The partner who is not blindfolded can't touch the other.

5. If you want to make the activity more challenging, have all the pairs go simultaneously so teams must find ways to strategically communicate with each other.

9. Blind Formations

1. Have the group put on blindfolds and form a large circle.

2. Tie two ends of a rope together and lay it in a circle in the middle of the group, close enough so each person can reach down and touch it.

3. Instruct the group to communicate to create a shape with the rope — a square, triangle, rectangle, etc.

4. If you have a very large group, divide them into teams and provide a rope for each team. Let them compete to see who forms a particular shape quickest.

Quick and easy problem-solving activities

10. line up blind.

1. Blindfold everyone and whisper a number to each person, beginning with one.

2. Tell them to line up in numerical order without talking.

3. Instead of giving them a number, you could also have them line up numerically by height, age, birthday, etc.

11. Reverse Pyramid

Helps with: Adaptability, collaboration

1. Have everyone stand in a pyramid shape, horizontally.

2. Ask them to flip the base and the apex of the pyramid moving only three people.

3. This quick exercise works best when smaller groups compete to see who can reverse the pyramid the fastest.

12. Move It!

Chalk, rope, tape, or paper (something to mark a space)

1. Divide your group into two teams and line them up front to back, facing each other.

2. Using the chalk, tape, rope, or paper (depending on the playing surface), mark a square space for each person to stand on. Leave one extra empty space between the two facing rows.

3. The goal is for the two facing lines of players to switch places.

4. Place these restrictions on movement:

Only one person may move at a time.
A person may not move around anyone facing the same direction.
No one may not move backward.
A person may not move around more than one person on the other team at a time.

13. Human Knot

1. Have everyone stand in a circle, and ask each person to hold hands with two people who aren’t directly next to them.

2. When everyone is tangled together, ask them to untangle the knot and form a perfect circle — without letting go of anyone's hand.

Our last two problem-solving activities work best when dealing with an actual problem:

14. Dumbest Idea First

Helps with: Instant problem-solving

1. "Dumb" ideas are sometimes the best ideas. Ask everyone to think of the absolute dumbest possible solution to the problem at hand.

2. After you have a long list, look through it and see which ones might not be as dumb as you think.

3. Brainstorm your solutions in Wrike. It's free and everyone can start collaborating instantly!

15. What Would X Do

1. Have everyone pretend they're someone famous.

2. Each person must approach the problem as if they were their chosen famous person. What options would they consider? How would they handle it?

3. This allows everyone to consider solutions they might not have thought of originally.

Looking for more team-building and virtual meeting games? Check out these virtual icebreaker games or our Ultimate Guide to Team Building Activities that Don't Suck.

Additional resources on problem-solving activities

Problem-Solving Model : Looking for a model to provide a problem-solving structure? This detailed guide gives you the tools to quickly solve any problem.
The Simplex Process: Popularized by Min Basadur's book, The Power of Innovation , the Simplex Process provides training and techniques for each problem-solving stage. It helps frame problem-solving as a continuous cycle, rather than a “one and done” process.
Fun Problem-Solving Activities and Games : Looking for more ideas? Check out this list of interesting and creative problem-solving activities for adults and kids!
The Secret to Better Problem-Solving: This article provides tips, use cases, and fresh examples to help you become a whiz at solving the toughest problems.

How to organize problem-solving activities with Wrike

If you want to make problem-solving activities more effective, consider using team collaboration software such as Wrike.

Wrike’s pre-built actionable meeting notes template helps you keep track of meeting discussions, assign action items, and keep everyone in the loop. It’s an effective tool to streamline your problem-solving sessions and turn insights into real projects.

Brianna Hansen

Brianna is a former Content Marketing Manager of Wrike. When she’s not writing about collaboration and team building games, you’ll find her in the kitchen testing out the latest recipes, sharing her favorite wine with friends, or playing with her two cats.

7 Teamwork Terrors and How to Conquer Them

Since the dawn of man, teamwork and cooperation has been the preferred method of getting things done. From the pyramids of Giza to the Golden Gate Bridge, we rely heavily on teams of engineers and architects to create such majestic masterpieces. However, where there is teamwork, there is work required to be a team. Too many voices and conflicting opinions can lead to a giant headache and bring productivity to a grinding halt. Throw in egos, politics, and laziness and you've got a recipe for disaster. Here are 7 barriers that harm the harmony of your team: 1. Anchoring Have you ever been part of a group brainstorming session where, once two or three ideas have been shared, new ideas stop flowing and the group sort of shuts down? That’s anchoring. Teams get mentally stuck on the first few ideas and stop thinking of new solutions. Avoid the anchoring trap with these 7 brainstorming tricks, including brain writing. Be sure to keep all types of workers in mind with team building exercises for remote workers, so everyone feels included in the creative conversation. 2. Groupthink This teamwork barrier occurs when a majority of the group conforms to one idea despite their own concerns and insights, perhaps due to laziness, fear of judgement, time limitations, or being subjected to peer pressure from other members of the group. Because this is another common brainstorming risk, techniques like Stepladder and Round Robin brainstorming encourage everyone in the group to share their thoughts before settling on a course of action. 3. Social Loafing "If I don't get around to it, then someone on my team will just do it for me." If you've said this to yourself, then you're guilty of social loafing. Don't pat your lazy self on the back quite yet, you might have just cost your team some valuable productivity! Social loafing is the act of putting in less effort for a team project than you would for a solo task. This forces other team members to pick up the slack and possibility grow to resent you. One way to avoid this is by breaking a project into individual tasks and holding each team member accountable for certain steps. See how Wrike can help you assign tasks and delegate big projects. 4. Unresolvable Conflict Even the most successful teams sometimes experience conflict due to differences in opinion, perspectives, and experiences. However, if there is no way to resolve the conflict, then conflict harms your project's outcome. Unresolvable conflict can be caused by unclear goals and expectations for the project at hand, so avoid it by clearly communicating goals with the team and helping everyone understand their role. 5. Confirmation Bias Confirmation bias is the tendency to only accept information or evidence that confirms your own preconceptions. This bias can quickly become a roadblock when trying to iron out team conflict or justify a decision, and it can potentially lead to the Halo/Horn Effect (see below) and compromise good decision-making. To ward off this bias, challenge your beliefs and play devil's advocate. The Six Thinking Hats technique can also help you see a different perspective on the issue. 6. Halo/Horn Effect The way you perceive an individual strongly affects how you interact with them. If they made a poor first impression, or an offhand comment rubbed you the wrong way, you may have a subconscious bias against them. When that individual voices an opinion, you might automatically be more critical than you normally would. This can work to the opposite effect too. When someone you like shares their opinion, you might have a tendency to agree. When making big team decisions, try to be aware of this bias and focus on the best outcome for the team. 7. Overconfidence Effect Your perceptions and experiences inevitably shape who you are — but they can also lead to subtle mental biases that result in flawed decision making. The Overconfidence Effect happens when you accept or reject an idea based purely off a hunch with no evidence to back you up. (In fact, studies show that entrepreneurs are more likely to fall for this mental fallacy, rejecting others' ideas because of the false belief that they know what's best.) Don't fall for this mental trap! Always research new information and seek objective evidence to combat confirmation bias (and hopefully learn something new as well). What other teamwork barriers have you experienced? We'd love to hear how you resolved your teamwork troubles in the comments!

13 Awesome Team-Building Games (Infographic)

Whether you want to do new hire orientation icebreakers or just bond your team closer together, check out our list of awesome team building games that you and your team will want to play over and over again.

6 Different Team Effectiveness Models to Understand Your Team Better

Understanding these 6 team effectiveness models can help you figure out which model to adopt for your own team. Or it may simply help shed light into what's working in your own group, and how to help improve what's lacking.

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Struggling to engage your students in teamwork? Look no further. By incorporating team building skills, students can develop a variety of abilities including teamwork, cooperation, creative thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills, all essential for their personal and academic growth.

The following article lists over 25 engaging team building activities for students that are guaranteed to foster collaboration, enhance communication, and cultivate leadership for kids . These exercises are practical, can be easily integrated into your curriculum, and are tailored for the student’s developmental stage. Get ready to transform your group work sessions into dynamic team-building experiences.

Key Takeaways

Favorite team building activities are crucial for students, improving essential skills like communication, problem-solving, leadership, and cooperation, through engaging and educational games both indoors and outdoors. These activities are among the most effective for fostering a supportive and cooperative environment.
Classroom and academic-focused team building exercises blend learning with play, helping students grasp educational concepts while developing critical thinking, teamwork, and problem-solving skills in a fun environment.
Team building isn’t limited to the classroom; activities can extend to family environments and real-world tasks like lemonade stands , fostering life skills, family bonding, entrepreneurial understanding, and effective communication.

Unlocking Teamwork: The Magic of Fun Team Building Activities

The impact of team building activities is significant and extends well beyond simple enjoyment. These engaging exercises are powerful in honing crucial capabilities, including:

Effective Communication
Inventiveness
Analytical Problem-solving
Directive Leadership

Visualize the enthusiasm as learners dive into participatory games like Zip, Zap, Boing! and Hot Seat. They’re not just having fun—they’re sharpening their focus, practicing rapid cognition, improving their spoken interactions while simultaneously nurturing leadership aptitudes.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg! Engagements such as Team Tic-Tac-Toe, Flip-the-Tarp Challenge, and Straw Challenge compel students to draw on their creative thinking reservoirs and navigate intricate problem-solving scenarios.

This bolsters both intellectual growth and teamwork proficiency. Dividing students into groups for these activities enhances their effectiveness by promoting collaboration and interpersonal development within smaller, focused teams.

Weaving in playful building activities such as Yes, No Stand Up or popping question-filled balloons in a segment named Get To Know You disrupts routine teaching methods while also cementing a stronger sense of community within the learning space.

The Adventure of Cooperation

Delve into the realm of collaboration with team building activities designed to be both enjoyable and instructive. Here are a few exercises to explore.

Great Chain Race
Hula-Hoop Pass
Pretzel, Unpretzel

These activities unite pupils in the pursuit of a shared objective, assessing various facets of teamwork such as inventive thinking during the Great Chain Race, reliance on others in Snakes, tactical planning required for Hula-Hoop Pass, while fostering joy within teams through games like Knee Relay. Successfully navigating these building activities instills lessons in cooperation alongside feelings of collective success and mutual delight.

Mastering Communication Skills Through Play

Boost the communication skills of learners by incorporating entertaining activities such as Back-to-Back Drawing and The Human Knot. These games are effective in honing verbal communication since participants must depend on spoken directions to replicate a picture. Yet, successful communication encompasses more than just language.

Games like The Human Knot, along with Hula Hoop Fingers and the Body Parts game, compel students to express concepts using non-verbal means, thereby enhancing their non-verbal communicative abilities. The charm of these activities is found in their ability to cultivate both aspects of communicating—verbal and non-verbal—in an engaging and interactive manner!

Leadership on the Playground

Honing leadership skills can go beyond the confines of a classroom and be cultivated on the playground. Engaging in activities like Rock, Paper, Scissors Tag allows students to develop strategic thinking and decision-making abilities crucial for leadership as they work together in a dynamic environment.

Similarly, leadership qualities are called into play during the Human Caterpillar Activity, where students must work in unison to maneuver across a circular path composed of newspapers toward a finish line. This activity highlights the critical role that collaboration plays in achieving team goals .

Classroom Capers: Fun Indoor Team Building Activities

If the weather is suboptimal, there’s no need to worry! The Human Knot, Chain Reaction, and Hidden Structures are indoor team building games that can transform any classroom into a lively space for teamwork and creative problem-solving.

Among these indoor team-building activities you’ll find:

The Human Knot, which tests students by having them disentangle themselves while maintaining hand contact, thus fostering communication and coordination. Initially, students stand in a circle, facing each other, to start the game.
The Chain Reaction game has participants passing along an action down a line, enhancing both their cooperative skills and communicative abilities.
In Hidden Structures, the challenge lies in constructing a Lego or block edifice from oral directives alone. It’s an ideal task for cultivating creativity during inside recess.

Such games not only keep students entertained but also nurture collaborative spirit even when outdoor excursions aren’t possible.

With exercises like the Knee Relay—a competition where pupils use solely their knees to transport items—physical dexterity and spatial awareness are promoted within an interior setting.

Mystery Mind Meld

Encourage students to partake in cooperative tasks such as the Lego Challenge and Scavenger Hunt, which are designed to bolster problem-solving abilities and teamwork abilities. During the Lego Challenge, pairs of students construct models using Lego blocks, sharpening both their spatial reasoning and collaborative skills within a team environment. Adapted for history education, the Scavenger Hunt prompts teams to seek out historical artifacts or information collectively—merging educational content with exercises in team building.

Introduce an activity like Storytime!, which combines storytelling into a group dynamic that promotes creativity while enhancing collaboration among participants.

Chain Reaction

Encourage collaboration and imaginative problem resolution with interactive activities such as the Marshmallow Challenge, where participants fashion the highest standalone structure from spaghetti sticks and marshmallows. This hands-on task helps sharpen their team-building prowess and cultivates innovative problem-solving capabilities.

During a chain reaction team building exercise, students come together to devise complex sequences of cause-and-effect interactions. Throughout this collaborative effort, they must:

Join forces seamlessly
Merge their thoughts and assets
Communicate with clarity
Determine individual roles
Offer mutual support in pursuit of a shared objective

As students construct these structures, they acquire valuable competencies that enhance their ability to function effectively within a team environment.

Silent Strategy

Enhance non-verbal interaction and teamwork through interactive exercises such as Seeing Spots, Silent Toss, and Fingertip Hula-Hoop. These games are designed to foster the growth of silent strategy skills by encouraging participants to communicate and collaborate without the use of verbal cues.

In particular, Fingertip Hula-Hoop imposes a challenge where individuals must rely on non-spoken signals for problem-solving. Similarly, in the game Blind Minefield, partners must navigate a blindfolded participant across an obstacle course using only their listening abilities and mutual trust.

Sunshine Squad: Outdoor Team Building Challenges

Step outside and embrace the sunshine with fun team building activities like Chuck the Chicken, Scavenger Hunts, and Common Thread. These outdoor team building challenges provide a fantastic way to promote collaboration and creativity while enjoying the great outdoors. Additionally, consider incorporating a team building game for an even more engaging experience.

For example, Chuck the Chicken can be played by dividing students into two teams, adding a competitive edge to this outdoor game that helps students expend energy while engaging in team building activities. Scavenger hunts, on the other hand, foster teamwork by encouraging.

collaboration
task division
effective communication

Even obstacle courses can be used in pairs with guidance or as relays to build trust and camaraderie among equal teams of students.

The Great Obstacle Course

Promote collective effort and physical dexterity by utilizing playground apparatus and agility courses. For example, The Great Obstacle Course is specifically tailored for children’s teams, offering an array of climbing structures and slides as part of the course. Throughout this event, the value of working in unity comes to the forefront while kids enthusiastically root for each other, thus strengthening bonds of fellowship and mutual encouragement.

Eco-Explorers

Incorporate environmental education into your team-building repertoire by organizing nature-focused scavenger hunts and outdoor adventures, which stand out as superb team building activities for kids. Crafting a scavenger hunt that is rooted in the natural world not only fosters team building, but also serves as an instructive tool to enlighten students about their surroundings. This activity aims to enhance collaborative skills while simultaneously deepening the participants’ understanding of the environment, thereby establishing it as a prime selection for those seeking enriching outdoor team-building activities.

Relay Races Reimagined

Reinvent conventional relay races by integrating cerebral activities such as the Human Alphabet, Hidden Structures, and No-Hands Cup-Stacking Challenge. By doing so, these innovative versions of relay races take team building to a new level. They prompt students to participate in both physical exertion and intellectual stimulation. This approach fosters teamwork and hones their problem-solving skills while working together effectively.

Artistic Alliances: Creative Team Building Exercises

Ignite the potential of creativity in team building with activities such as Storytime, Collaborative Canvas, and Drama Dynamics. By involving students in collective artistic endeavors, they can cultivate valuable competencies like patience, teamwork capability, and positive competitive spirit.

Take Storytime for example, a participatory exercise where each student adds to an unfolding tale four words at a time. This not only promotes unity among group members, but also bolsters their skills in imaginative narrative construction.

Moreover, these creative team building exercises teach students about the importance of collaboration, enhancing their ability to work together and appreciate diverse perspectives.

Collaborative Canvas

Encourage students to work together on a communal painting project, which fosters teamwork and a collective purpose. The activity known as Collaborative Canvas involves students in the process of crafting a joint artwork. In this endeavor, every single student contributes their unique touch to the ultimate piece, thereby learning about working harmoniously with others and maintaining consistency in their shared artistic goal.

Story Circle

Enhance your group’s teamwork and capacity for inventive storytelling with engaging exercises such as Story Around the Circle and Story Spine. During the Story Circle activity, students take turns adding to a cumulative tale, where each new segment is built upon the last.

When you integrate Story Around the Circle into a session of Story Circle, you not only boost creativity among participants, but also significantly improve their listening skills as they collaboratively weave an evolving narrative.

Drama Dynamics

Boost collaboration and meticulousness through exercises such as Changing Tableau and collective performances that employ objects from a “goodie bag.” In groups comprising 5-10 participants, students use these items to devise brief theatrical pieces connected with their study material, nurturing inventiveness while ensuring the activity’s relevance to what they are learning.

In the Changing Tableau exercise, two squads of learners keenly inspect a staged scene (tableau). The objective is for them to spot modifications introduced by an opposing team. They earn points each time they correctly recognize changes made by their rivals, thereby enhancing both teamwork skills and attention to fine details.

Brainy Bonds: Academic-Focused Team Building Tasks

Engage in classroom team building activities that do not segregate students but instead encourage unity, such as:

20 Questions: this activity fosters collaborative efforts and critical reasoning as students unite to deduce the identity of a hidden subject through strategic yes or no inquiries, with one student taking a leading role in asking questions.
Math Marathon: builds camaraderie while pressing students to collectively tackle mathematical challenges within time constraints
Science Sleuths: tasks student groups with applying their scientific acumen to unravel enigmas

These enjoyable academic exercises are pivotal for cultivating skills like communication, collaboration, and adeptness at problem solving.

A selection of these favored team building exercises offers a dynamic platform for honing critical thinking and problem-solving abilities closely tied to their studies. As they stand engaged in cooperative endeavors, learners forge more effective teamwork capacities amidst an entertaining learning environment, with each team member playing a crucial role in navigating academic-focused tasks successfully.

Math Marathon

Enhance teamwork skills and problem-solving capabilities by engaging in mathematical games such as Guess the Rule, What’s My Number, and Card Swap. Math Marathon presents an opportunity to bolster team building by involving students in collaborative math challenges that require them to unite their efforts in order to find solutions.

During the Guess the Rule game, participants collaborate to deduce a concealed rule through the classification of number cards into yes or no piles, thereby promoting cooperative problem solving among team members.

Science Sleuths

Encourage students to participate in collective experiments and assignments such as Save the Egg, Paper Tower, and Hidden Structures to cultivate teamwork while fostering scientific reasoning. Activities under Science Sleuths involve group-oriented tasks designed to promote cooperative efforts amongst learners by using scientific methods for problem-solving.

In the team-building exercise known as Save the Egg, students must collaborate to construct a parachute that will protect an egg from cracking upon being dropped from an elevated position. This task imparts knowledge of physics and materials science through hands-on experience.

History Hunters

Through engaging competitive games such as History Hunters and scenarios like the Deserted Island, students can dive deeply into historical facts and challenges. History Hunters specifically facilitates a team-based competition within schools or classrooms where participants bid in an auction for items that could assist them in unraveling mysteries or challenges associated with past events or personalities.

Family Foundations: Team Building Activities for Home

Enhance family bonds and deepen mutual understanding by engaging in team building activities within the home, such as whipping up creative culinary projects or indulging in a competitive round of Board Game Bonanza. Engaging in these enjoyable collective experiences can bolster kinship ties through team building endeavors.

These types of building activities are especially valuable for families that have recently merged due to remarriage or adoption, helping integrate members smoothly into the new family dynamic. They serve an important role in preserving strong connections among family members as children mature.

Kitchen Concoctions

Foster both education and collaboration within the family by engaging in group cooking experiences, such as pizza nights or joint meal preparation efforts. These culinary ventures act as a team-building activity that encourages skill acquisition through hands-on involvement.

Consistent events like pizza nights provide an opportunity to learn essential abilities related to organization and cooperative effort, with every person playing a part in crafting their individual pizzas.

Board Game Bonanza

Encourage both family unity and teamwork by engaging in cooperative board games including SOS Dino, Hoot Owl Hoot!, and Pandemic. To suit a variety of ages and preferences while reinforcing the importance of working together, families can select from these types of board games for their game nights.

Organizing consistent game nights that involve puzzles or board games fosters strategic thought processes among participants, which enhances team-building efforts within the family.

Home Improvement Heroes

Embark on straightforward domestic enhancement endeavors such as tidying up a space, applying new paint, or carrying out minor fixes. These activities encourage families to foster collaboration and teamwork by necessitating the joint effort and allocation of responsibilities among members.

Getting involved in communal gardening offers an opportunity for all family members, even those in kindergarten, to jointly tend to plant life. This collective effort not only promotes a shared sense of duty, but also reinforces the principles of working together effectively as a team.

Nurturing Teamwork Skills and Life Skills Through Lemonade Stands

Establishing a lemonade stand provides children with an effective platform for acquiring and employing essential life skills within a context that is easily understandable and applicable to the real world. This activity represents a gateway into the realm of youth entrepreneurship , offering both children and their parents an opportunity to explore business fundamentals while honing vital life capabilities.

Budgeting Basics

Children aiming for a successful lemonade stand must formulate a budget that encompasses all expenses, including the cost of ingredients and any necessary permits or fees. They should also determine an appropriate price point for their lemonade by taking into account ingredient costs, customer payment expectations, and what rival stands are charging.

In operating their own lemonade business , students learn financial literacy skills to understand profit and loss through the evaluation of total sales against the costs associated with purchasing supplies.

Marketing Minds

Cultivate essential marketing abilities by engaging in exercises such as creating signs embellished with logos and memorable taglines, as well as mastering the art of efficiently advertising their lemonade stands . To draw patrons to their stands, they should employ innovative sign boards and leverage social media channels, together with local community outreach.

Running a lemonade stand offers students practical insights into financial stewardship encompassing budget oversight, pricing strategy formulation, and inventory control. This hands-on exposure facilitates an appreciation of how financial governance works in concert with marketing initiatives.

Salesmanship and Service

Running a lemonade stand enables students to cultivate an essential interpersonal skill—customer service. It provides them with the opportunity to learn how to welcome customers warmly and handle money transactions proficiently.

By choosing a smart spot for their lemonade stand, children have the chance to interact with a larger customer base and employ sales strategies that can sharpen their entrepreneurial skills.

Supportive Strategies: How Parents Can Help

Parents are essential in nurturing their children’s abilities to work effectively in a team. It is important for them to participate alongside their offspring and offer tangible support during these team building exercises.

By offering guidance and backing when it comes to the entrepreneurial endeavors of their kids, parents can significantly enrich educational experiences and help instill an entrepreneurial and growth mindset .

Encouragement and Engagement

By cultivating a nurturing atmosphere in which kids are comfortable sharing their thoughts and emotions, parents can promote frank dialogue.

When children engage as team members in team building activities, it boosts their confidence to voice their opinions and reassures them that they are being listened to.

Guided Growth

Role-playing exercises can be employed by parents to recreate potential or existing bullying instances, guiding kids on how to respond assertively and with a strong tone.

Nurturing self-reflection in young ones promotes the development of an individual sense of accountability as well as their ability to solve problems.

Celebrating Success

Acknowledging the accomplishments of children in team activities serves to fortify positive conduct by helping them navigate through the peaks and valleys of working within a group dynamic and mastering emotional regulation. Commendation for effectively managing conflicts during these team building exercises instills a sense of assurance in children regarding their capacity to address disagreements that may arise in subsequent situations.

Final Thoughts on Team Building Activities For Students

In summary, team building activities serve as a crucial instrument to cultivate vital abilities in students. These activities contribute to the unlocking of teamwork and creative thinking whether it is within classroom walls or in outdoor settings.

By initiating ventures such as lemonade stands, they play a significant role in teaching life skills that cover an extensive array of developmental areas. Not only do these building activities enhance collaboration, communication, and leadership qualities, but also improve problem-solving capabilities and strengthen interpersonal relations.

Implementing these team-building exercises both at schools and homes provides a nurturing atmosphere that motivates children to share their thoughts freely while fostering personal accountability and equipping them with the confidence to tackle future obstacles head-on. Embarking on this path for skill acquisition becomes an enjoyable experience filled with amusement, shared laughter, and learning becomes an enthralling escapade!

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the benefits of team building activities for students?

Engaging students in team building activities is highly beneficial, as it cultivates critical capabilities such as teamwork and communication. These building activities nurture a communal spirit among participants while enhancing physical coordination and collaborative efforts—factors that are integral to the comprehensive growth of any student.

Can team building activities be conducted indoors?

Certainly! Activities for team building indoors, like Human Knot and Chain Reaction, are great tools to enhance teamwork and problem-solving capabilities. They demonstrate that any indoor area can be transformed into a venue for team-strengthening exercises.

How can outdoor team building activities promote learning?

Team building activities conducted outdoors have the potential to enhance learning by encouraging teamwork, sparking creativity, and nurturing a sense of fellowship in an open-air setting. Such outdoor team-building exercises also allow students to release energy collaboratively as they strive toward shared objectives.

How can creative team building exercises enhance learning?

Exercises in team building that focus on creativity can bolster the development of abilities like patience, collaboration, and sportsmanship. They are also beneficial for enhancing collective work efforts and imaginative storytelling skills.

Consequently, these activities serve as an engaging and efficient method to augment learning experiences and foster teamwork among group participants.

How can parents support their children in team building activities?

Parents can foster a conducive atmosphere for their children to partake in team building activities by not only encouraging them to get involved but also advising them on when it’s appropriate to ask for assistance from adults.

Such support allows the young ones to confidently and securely participate in collective building activities, knowing they have the backing needed.

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Team Building Activities for Small Groups: 15 Super Fun Ideas

By: Grace He | Updated: April 30, 2024

Here is our list of fun team building activities for small groups at work or school.

Team building activities for small groups are fun-filled exercises, games and ideas designed to enhance team collaboration. For example, the broken telephone and the tower of babel are good activities for students and adults. The purpose of these exercises is to strengthen relationships and encourage team participation in small groups.

These ideas are a subset of office team building exercises and fun group activities , and are similar to small group icebreaker games . You can use these ideas as trust-building exercises , community-building activities and for team building events .

This list includes:

team building activities for small groups
team building exercises for small groups
team building ideas for small groups
small group team building activities for adults

Here are the ideas.

List of team building activities for small groups

When choosing team building exercises for small groups, it is best to select activities that allow everyone to participate. You can adopt these quick small group team building activities for your students or colleagues.

1. The Great Guac Off™️ (Team Favorite)

The Great Guac Off is a friendly competition that showcases your team’s guacamole-making skills! This lively avocado-themed celebration lets colleagues work together and enhance their teamwork.

The Great Guac Off includes the following:

a 90-minute session guided by talented hosts
interactive avocado icebreakers, mini-games, and trivia
delicious guacamole ingredients and chips for dipping
an optional secret ingredient to add excitement to the competition
a guacamole mash-off followed by a judging round to determine the winner

We can host this experience at any venue you choose, and we will meet you there with all the supplies. To foster stronger bonds and improve communication skills within your teams, look no further than The Great Guac Off!

Learn more about The Great Guac Off .

2. Quick-Fire Trivia

This quick succession question-and-answer activity tests coordination, speed, and teamwork.

Required: Divide your team into smaller groups of two to four people. Each subgroup will choose a representative. The facilitator will then read the questions drawn from different disciplines. For example, the questions could range from history to art or science.

The goal is to get the most points within each two-minute round. For each correct answer, the team earns a point.

Here are the rules:

The team members can discuss the questions, but only the rep will answer.
The answers should be short – a word or a list but not descriptions.
The reader can only repeat a question once.
The team cannot answer before the facilitator finishes reading the question.
The representative’s answer is final.
The team can express differing opinions; however, the rep has the final say in deciding the answer.

At the end of the exercise, the members will discuss the performance and strategize ways to improve. This exercise aims at educating members about consultation and decision-making.

Here is a list of more problem-solving games and a collection of starter questions for trivia .

Get our free team building toolbox

icebreaker games
bingo cards

3. The Clueless

The Clueless is one of the best small group activities for adults that nurtures problem-solving and communication skills. Your team will enjoy this fun and straightforward exercise.

Required: Divide your group into smaller teams. Each team receives a sealed written problem. These problems should be possible case scenarios at work, home, or school. Before reading, the team will select one member to temporarily exclude from the group. You shall refer to this member as ‘the clueless,’ This member will need to decipher and solve the problem.

The team building leader will assess the activity on a scale of five points.

The groups will have five minutes to read and discuss the main issues. The leader can give more time to younger students.
The groups should develop up to three keywords that best describe the issue. Once done, the clueless rejoin the groups.
The clueless have three minutes to figure out the issue using the keywords as clues. Then, the clueless can only ask two follow-up questions to clarify.
The rest of the members must remain mute and only communicate through facial expressions and cues. It is up to the members to guide their teammates without speaking or writing.
The clueless members will then identify the problem and describe the method for tackling the scenario.
The leader awards points based on the problem’s accuracy and the solution’s relevance. The leader may award up to two points for the problem and three for the solution.

This activity helps members to identify and appreciate nonverbal cues. These signals include reading moods and unexpressed concerns from customers, colleagues, and fellow students in real life.

4. The Tower of Babel

This activity is one of small group team building ideas drawn from ancient history. The idea mocks the Babylonian tower story and seeks to build the tallest, longest-standing tower.

Required: Divide members into smaller groups of three or four. Each group should make a tower by stacking provided supplies.

Each group will use similar building materials. Some good ideas for the materials include pens, toothpicks, and toy building blocks.
Each mini-group will get an equal amount of building supplies.
There is no restriction on arranging the building materials. Team creativity is of the essence.
The towers must remain standing for the duration of the judging.
The members should use all the building materials.

At the end of a session, group members will measure the tower’s height and compare notes with other groups. The idea is to promote creative thinking and collaboration.

5. The Swallowship

The Swallowship is a fellowship exercise that promotes bonding. Members help each other identify secret ingredients in food. Among the best quick small group team building activities, The Swallowship tests memory and discussion skills.

Required: The leaders assign each team a main ingredient. The members will then develop a secret recipe using the core ingredient. For example, the secret ingredient could include spices, essence, or herbs. Depending on the setup, participants may cook on-site or prepare the food before the activity.

Different teams should taste each other’s food.
Each member is only allowed one bite-size sample.
Members may use other senses like sight and smell to identify the ingredients.
After swallowing the sample, the teams will discuss the ingredients and list possibilities. The members may list as many ingredients as they can identify or remember.
The correct secret ingredient earns the team one point. Yet, for every wrong ingredient, teams lose a point.

The goal of the game is to collect as many points as possible.

Note: Ask if members have food allergies before starting the exercise. Common allergens to watch out for include gluten, egg, milk, and nuts.

6. Back-to-School PE

Physical activities provide a great way to bond during small group team building activities for adults. In Back-to-school PE, members will engage in a series of cardiovascular exercises.

Based on the needs of the group members, the team-building leader will select appropriate exercises. Examples of small group team building activities for students may include relay running, frog jumping, star jumps, and push-ups. Older people can do stretches and other suitable exercises. The important thing is to select and balance appropriate high to low energy options.

Physical exercises improve mood and mental health, promoting morale and productivity in teams.

For similar ideas, here is a list of team workouts .

7. The Broken Telephone

The Broken Telephone is a communication exercise and one of the best team building activities for small groups. The aim of the game is to pass a message without altering its meaning.

Required: Members will line up in a circle, keeping a distance of at least one and a half meters from each other. The first player will share a message by whispering the phrase into the second person’s ear. Next, the second person will do the same to the third. The pattern repeats until the message reaches the last person in line.

Team members must whisper the message.
Members should cover their mouths while speaking to prevent lip reading.
The last person will speak the phrase out loud, and the first member will reveal how closely the statement matches the original message.
If the message is wildly incorrect, the group will have to diagnose the problem with the telephone line. Each member will say the message they passed. The member who distorts a message moves to the end of the line.

The goal of the exercise is to encourage attentive listening.

8. Tell My Story

This creativity exercise engages all team members. If you need small group team building ideas for introverted and shy members, then Tell My Story is a good option. The game grants silent group members a chance to speak.

Required: Have all group members sit or stand in a circle. The facilitator will have a pre-written short story. The leader reads the first sentence of the script, and the members will continue the story.

Each member will input one sentence at a time.
You cannot pass your turn.
You cannot skip a member before they speak.
You cannot start a new story unless it continues the original. The story must flow and relate to the previous sentences.
The story ends only when the facilitator says, “The end.” After that, he will read the original script.

It is interesting how a story can deviate. Since everyone is narrating from their imagination, the story is entirely unpredictable. Therefore, members end up practicing attentiveness and creativity.

9. Office Thief

The Office Thief is a fun small group activity that promotes conversation and socialization among team members.

Required: The facilitator will organize a heist and remove personal items from each member’s desk or locker. The leader will disguise these items in similar boxes. Finally, members will pick the items, make their guesses, and write on sticky notes.

The leader will put the disguised items in a central place.
Each member should select one item. Once selected, you cannot change your mind.
Members may use senses like weight and sound to determine the item.
Each member will guess the item and write the guess on a sticky note alongside their names.
Without opening the boxes, members will interact. The goal is to find the owner of the item.
Members will reassemble and write the name of the suspected owner without opening the boxes.
In pairs, players will exchange the boxes. One by one, members will read the written guesses and finally unveil the items.
Finally, owners will confirm possession and claim their items

The game’s goal is to guess the item and return the object to its rightful owner. This activity uses conversations to solve problems, and members will learn more about each other.

Check out more get to know you games .

10. Water Balloon

This water balloon exercise involves carrying a balloon filled with water to a designated place without using hands.

Required: Have smaller teams of 3 to 5 members each. Each subgroup will fill a large balloon with water and place the balloon on a marked starting point.

Each team must carry the balloon to the designated place.
You cannot touch the balloon with your hands. The team should figure out how to carry the balloon.
You must lift the balloon to move it.
The water balloon must not touch the floor between the starting and finish points.
Ensure that the balloon does not burst.
The team that violates the rules must return to the starting point. The exercise stops when the last team arrives at the finish line.

Water Balloon is one of the most practical games for sharpening critical thinking and problem-solving skills and is one of the best small group team building activities for students.

11. The Diplomat

The Diplomat is an activity that helps team members identify and appreciate each others’ strengths and weaknesses.

Required: Divide the team into groups of three members. The members will share their interests and fears in their mini-groups.

Team members should be at least one meter apart and must not face each other.
The facilitator will provide case scenarios. He will then ask the team, “Choose your most suitable diplomat for this mission.”
The three team members cannot discuss their answers. Instead, they will write the answers on whiteboards.
When signaled, each person will display the member’s name they chose as the diplomat. At this point, group members may look at each other’s answers.

The goal of the game is to agree on a unanimous answer. The diplomat is one of the quick small group team building activities where teams interact more personally.

12. Back-to-Back Drawing

The Back-to-back Drawing exercise is a communication activity that tests members’ speaking and listening skills.

Required: Members will work in pairs. The team building leader will give each duo a picture and writing materials like paper and marker pens. Then, one team member will hold a picture and describe the image, and the other player must draw the object exactly as described.

The partners must remain back-to-back throughout the exercise.
Neither partner should peek at the other’s picture.

The game aims for each pair to draw similar or identical pictures.

Example objects might include cartoon characters, emojis, landscapes, or other fun shapes.

Back-to-back Drawing is an in-person version of Can You Hear Me Now .

13. Guess the Logo

Guess the Logo is an exercise that helps eye-brain coordination.

Required: The coordinator will subdivide the team and display a part of a logo. Each team should identify the logo using the given clue.

The logo should refer to familiar brands, for example, popular eateries, institutions, and superstores.
The leader will display part of the logo. For example, part of text, colors, or images with the rest of the background blocked.
Members can discuss and figure out the brand’s name in the least time possible.

The activity’s goal is to match the logos to their brands. This exercise will give great insights into branding for workplace teams and marketing students.

14. Blind Snake and Apples

Blind Snake and Apples is a memory-sharpening exercise.

Required: Team members will have a chance to see the position of each apple before they start the activity. Players will then put on blindfolds and pick as many apples as possible.

Each member moves one step at a time. The coordinator will signal the members when it is time to move, and each player will take a step.
Upon each step, players may bend, sit or kneel to pick apples. The feet must remain on the same spot.
The players can pick fruit from any part and move in any direction.
Players decide whether to take a big or small step.
Each member is allowed an equal number of steps.

At the end of the activity, members can check each other’s performance. The group with the most fruits becomes the memory champion.

15. The Collection Board

This exercise seeks to find qualities members have in common. The game also helps members to get comfortable with each other.

How to conduct: The team-building leader will ask the members to bring items from the office, class, or home. The items can be everyday objects, yet each object should have a remarkable story. The leader will provide glue and Manila papers, and members will stick their items onto the paper.

The group makes a collage with the assorted items. The collection may involve items similar in color, shape, texture. During the activity, members need to find out the story attached to each item. At the end of the session, the members can share lessons they learned from each other’s stories.

Team building activities for small groups are fun ways to empowering teams. These exercises range widely in energy level, variety and application. There are indoor or outdoor activities suitable for every small group. When choosing an activity, it helps to consider participants’ demographics like age and physical capability before selecting the most appropriate one.

Team building activities and exercises are essential to your team. Apart from breaking the monotony of work and strengthening the team spirit, these exercises enhance physical and mental health. In addition, problem-solving techniques, collaboration, and communication are skills you can obtain from such activities and exercises.

Next, check out these lists of get to know you games and relationship-building activities .

Book wildly fun team building events with expert hosts

FAQ: Team Building Activities for Small Groups

Here are answers to common questions about small group team building activities.

What are small group team building activities?

Team building activities are playful indoor or outdoor exercises that small teams use to promote team spirit. These can range from high to low energy activities like back-to-school PE and the collection board, respectively.

What are some good small group team building activities for work?

A good team building activity allows each employee to participate enthusiastically. In choosing the most appropriate activity for work, it is important to consider your team’s demographics, such as age and health status. This mindfulness will enhance the effectiveness of the team building activities you select.

Some of the most all-around options include,

quick-fire trivia
the broken telephone
the diplomat
the water balloon

How do you improve teamwork on small teams?

To achieve a productive team, you need to influence the members to collaborate and make tasks interesting. Some of the tips that work effectively for small teams include:

Enhancing bonding through social activities like swallowship
promoting conversations through activities like Tell my story
Promoting creativity and problem-solving through activities like the water balloon
Acknowledging and appreciating leadership skills through exercises like The Diplomat
Enhancing staff motivation and morale through participation in ice breakers

Author: Grace He

People & Culture Director at teambuilding.com. Grace is the Director of People & Culture at TeamBuilding. She studied Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, Information Science at East China Normal University and earned an MBA at Washington State University.

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Solution-Focused Therapy is an approach that empowers clients to own their abilities in solving life's problems. Rather than traditional psychotherapy that focuses on how a problem was derived, SFT allows for a goal-oriented focus to problem-solving. This approach allows for future-oriented, rather than past-oriented discussions to move a ...
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What Is. Overcoming Obstacles? Overcoming Obstacles is a free, award-winning, and research-based K-12 curriculum that provides you with the tools to teach your students life skills. With hundreds of activity-based lessons covering more than 30 skills, students learn how to communicate effectively. They learn how to make informed decisions.
5 Problem-Solving Activities for the Classroom
2. Problem-solving as a group. Have your students create and decorate a medium-sized box with a slot in the top. Label the box "The Problem-Solving Box.". Invite students to anonymously write down and submit any problem or issue they might be having at school or at home, ones that they can't seem to figure out on their own.
Problem Solving
Consider your own behavior, as well as external factors. Define your problem. Be as clear and comprehensive as possible. If there are many parts to your problem, describe each of them. TIP: If you find it difficult to separate your emotions from the problem, try to complete this step from the perspective of an impartial friend.
Problem solving lesson plan
Lesson plan. (60 -75 minutes) This lesson is designed to equip young people with an adaptable approach to solving problems, large or small. It includes a short film and scenarios that encourage development of practical problem solving skills which can be useful for learning, day to day life, and when in employment.
Problem Solving Packet
worksheet. Guide your clients and groups through the problem solving process with the help of the Problem Solving Packet. Each page covers one of five problem solving steps with a rationale, tips, and questions. The steps include defining the problem, generating solutions, choosing one solution, implementing the solution, and reviewing the ...
Resilience Counseling: 12 Worksheets to Use in Therapy
Resilient Problem-Solving Skills. Whether our ability or capacity to become more resilient is thwarted by internal blocks (such as fear, anxiety, or anger) or external blocks (such as failing to hit sales targets or meeting financial burden), problem-solving can help (Neenan, 2018).
PDF LIFE SKILLS CURRICULUM
to apply life skills to what they are learning. For example, you might have students apply problem solving skills to word problems in their math classes. You can also have students use conflict resolution skills to find alternative solutions to wars they learn about in their history classes. Additionally, you might have students investigate differ-
PDF HOW TO SOLVE DAILY LIFE PROBLEMS
Step 4: Thinking up Solutions. The biggest mistake that we tend to make when thinking up solutions for our problems is to think about the same old solutions. But if those old solutions worked, the problem would not still be around. In order to come up with new solutions, you can follow the rules of brainstorming: 1.
17 Fun Problem Solving Activities & Games [for Kids ...
For this problem solving activity for older kids or teens, you will need four 2×6 boards. Divide your group into two teams with an equal number of children on each team. Place two of the four boards end to end on the ground or floor. Set the other two parallel to the first two about two or three feet apart.
44 Powerful Problem Solving Activities for Kids
By honing their problem-solving abilities, we're preparing kids to face the unforeseen challenges of the world outside. Enhances Cognitive Growth: Otherwise known as cognitive development. Problem-solving isn't just about finding solutions. It's about thinking critically, analyzing situations, and making decisions.
Best 20 Problem-Solving Activities to Challenge Your Team
Team problem-solving activities. The Game of Life (Virtual, hybrid, in-person) Activity focus areas: Teamwork, Reasoning, Time management, Strategy, Communication. Why Teamwork is important for Problem-Solving: Teamwork is essential for problem-solving as it brings together diverse perspectives, expertise, and skills, allowing for a comprehensive analysis of the problem and the generation of ...
Problem Solving Worksheets: Free Printable Templates
Engaging in interactive problem-solving activities can help develop critical thinking skills and creative approaches to overcoming obstacles. While these skills are used in a variety of aspects of life, our worksheets focus on problem solving in mathematics.
15 Problem-Solving Games and Activities for the Workplace
Here are 15 problem-solving games and activities for the workplace: 1. The great egg drop. Teams of three to four per group get an egg, masking tape and straws. The challenge is to build a structure that protects the egg from being broken when dropped from a designated area or height. Through cooperation, this activity helps teams practice ...
Life Skills Worksheets
Life skills equip individuals with the practical abilities and emotional intelligence needed to navigate challenges, build positive relationships, and make informed decisions. Mastering communication, problem-solving, time management, and other skills enhances adaptability, resilience, and overall well-being.
Top 50 problem solving activities, games & puzzles for remote teams
9. Group problem solving activities for adults. Group problem solving activities are very efficient, especially for adults. These can be used in any setting to enhance problem solving skills. 1. Human Knots. Benefits: Communication skills, collaboration; Time Duration: 10 - 15 minutes. Materials Required: N/A
Life Skills Lesson
Life Skills Activities Special Education. PROBLEM SOLVING SKILLS. Objectives: Students will be able to: · Define problem solving. · Explain why problem-solving skills are important. · Describe the IDEAL process for solving problems. · Apply problem solving strategies to solve a problem. INTRO TO INDEPENDENT LIVING SKILLS.
7 Problem-Solving Skills That Can Help You Be a More ...
Although problem-solving is a skill in its own right, a subset of seven skills can help make the process of problem-solving easier. These include analysis, communication, emotional intelligence, resilience, creativity, adaptability, and teamwork. 1. Analysis. As a manager, you'll solve each problem by assessing the situation first.
Top 15 Problem-Solving Activities for Your Team to Master
3. Egg Drop. Helps with: Collaboration, decision-making. Why decision-making is important for problem-solving: Making decisions isn't easy, but indecision leads to team paralysis, stagnant thinking, and unsolved problems. Decision-making activities help your team practice making quick, effective choices.
25+ Engaging Team Building Activities for Students to Foster
By initiating ventures such as lemonade stands, they play a significant role in teaching life skills that cover an extensive array of developmental areas. Not only do these building activities enhance collaboration, communication, and leadership qualities, but also improve problem-solving capabilities and strengthen interpersonal relations.
Team Building Activities for Small Groups: 15 Super Fun Ideas
The Clueless is one of the best small group activities for adults that nurtures problem-solving and communication skills. Your team will enjoy this fun and straightforward exercise. Required: Divide your group into smaller teams. Each team receives a sealed written problem. These problems should be possible case scenarios at work, home, or school.
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Strong analytical and problem-solving skills as well as capability to assume responsibility for complex reporting processes. • Advanced user and development knowledge of Risk Agility FM, R, SQL ...

13 Printable Life Skills Worksheets for Students and Adults

Why Do We Need Life Skills?

Life Skills Worksheets for Adults

2. Developing Critical Thinking

3. Empathy Workbook

4. Wall of Resilience

5. Weighing the Consequences of a Decision

6. Hold Yourself Accountable

7. Self-Love Worksheet

Worksheets for Students

9. Kitchen Safety

10. How to Write a Check

11. Communicating Effectively via Email

12. Helping Others

13. Making an Appointment

Final Thoughts

ChatGPT for Teachers

1. Brainstorm bonanza

2. Problem-solving as a group

3. Clue me in

4. Survivor scenarios

5. Moral dilemma

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Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

Solution-focused coaching

Resiliency field trip: a therapy tool to help you cope with stress – Emily Capito

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Practicing solution-focused resilience

Understanding the Impact of Attitudes on resilience

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When Was I (Not) Resilient?

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Creating Realistic Optimism for resilience

17 Tools To Build Resilience and Coping Skills

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