Week of the Young Child - Work Together Wednesday

Happy Week of the Young Child! I thought I'd celebrate by sharing some fun ideas to help you follow along with NAEYC's themed days. For more info about the Week of the Young Child celebration you can visit NAEYC's website, but I'm going to jump right into the fun!

Work together Wednesday - I love it! What a great theme day! There are about a million things that you could do to celebrate work together Wednesday, but the activity that I thought of immediately encourages more than just working together.  This activity takes some serious problem solving skills, along with a little bit of simple engineering.  The best part is that it only requires one supply - something that you already have in your classroom!

Using only paper, the children have to see how high of a tower they can build.  They can use the paper in any way that they want (fold it, tear it, etc.) there are no rules other than they can only use paper.  The children have to work together to figure out the best way to stack the paper and make it stand.  

If you're not sure that this will work well for your group, there are a number of other things that you could ask the children to build towers with, including;

• Plastic cups
• Empty tubs or baskets
• Playing cards
• Paper towel tubes
• Blocks
• Popsicle sticks
• Sponges
• Pool noodle pieces
• Wooden spools
• Empty boxes (kleenex, pop tarts, etc.)
• Oatmeal containers

All of these things are easy for little ones to handle, but will require some thinking for them to figure out how to stack them without them falling over.  

What will you do for work together Wednesday?!