Team building activities for preschool teachers are structured games, shared experiences, and collaborative exercises designed to improve communication and trust among early childhood educators. By participating in these activities, your staff can create a more positive and supportive work environment. Read on for unique and affordable ideas to try in your childcare program.
Guide to Build a Collaborative and Resilient Childcare Team
A free guide with strategies to build and retain a collaborative childcare team.
How do you build an effective team of preschool teachers?
Building an effective team of preschool teachers involves establishing clear goals, fostering mutual respect, and maintaining open channels of communication. An effective team building process does more than just bring a team together; it ensures different parts of your childcare program work cohesively. Below are actionable tips to help directors build effective teams.
Set expectations upfront
The first step to an effective team building experience is setting expectations upfront. This includes defining your team vision, goals, and objectives. A clear vision, alongside actionable goals, unifies the team and promotes collaboration.
Team members can work together to develop the vision for your childcare program. This promotes inclusivity and motivates teams to work harder to realize shared goals.
You will also want to introduce new staff members to your vision and objectives during onboarding and orientation. This way, they start on the same page with other staff members.
Respect team members
Respect for team members is the foundation for successful teams. Mutual respect among staff promotes collaboration, trust, integrity, and participation.
Team members are more productive and committed to their jobs when they feel respected. Directors can lead by example and demonstrate respect for their staff to promote a culture of respect among all team members.
Here are some ideas for demonstrating respect among teams:
- Treat team members with kindness and courtesy
- Encourage team members to express themselves freely
- Actively listen to team members when they express their opinions
- Implement team members' ideas
- Treat team members fairly and equally
Develop emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage your emotions, as well as those of the people around you. Emotional intelligence has five key elements: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.
Emotionally intelligent directors know what they feel, what their emotions mean, and how their emotions affect the team. Directors who stay calm, maintain control, and logically assess situations run functional childcare programs and highly effective teams.
Emotionally intelligent leaders treat their teams as human beings, not machines. They understand that team members are different and find motivation in different things. Lastly, they remain patient and support each team member according to their unique strengths and abilities.
Promote a positive team environment
Directors can use positive reinforcement to drive excellence in team performance. Shaping behavior works much better with positive reinforcement than negative reinforcement. You can promote a positive team environment by acknowledging staff for a job well done, celebrating achievements, and regularly showing appreciation for their hard work.
Create transparent and open communication channels
Good communication is crucial for building robust and effective teams. Clear lines of communication enhance understanding and collaboration, which makes teams more productive. An app like brightwheel makes it easy for administrators and directors to offer real-time support to staff and respond to questions instantly. Below are tips on how to promote effective communication among team members:
- Encourage transparency and openness
- Respect all points of view
- Clearly define roles
- Encourage feedback
- Develop schedules that work for everyone
Evaluate performance
Conducting annual performance evaluations can benefit everything from day-to-day operations to long-term employee retention. Structured performance reviews enable directors to identify staff strengths, pinpoint areas for improvement, and set specific goals that contribute to the overall success of your program.
Reviewing performance on a regular basis also creates a workplace culture that prioritizes feedback and professional development. Employees feel valued, stay connected to their work, and receive a dedicated space to bring up any concerns or questions.
Aim for diversity
Diverse teams thrive and are the best for driving organizations to success. Organizations with more diverse teams are more productive, innovative, and have better overall financial performance.
Diverse teams consist of members from different backgrounds and with varied lived experiences. This includes age, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, education level, areas of study, and industry background. Workplaces that prioritize building diverse teams foster an environment where employees with different perspectives feel valued, heard, and respected.
Why are team building activities for preschool teachers important?
Team building activities for preschool teachers are important because they build mutual trust, promote healthy communication, and encourage collaborative innovation. Preschool staff work more effectively when they enjoy their environment and feel connected to their peers. Team building is an excellent way to help staff feel supported, cared for, and happy in their roles.
Builds trust among teachers
Trust acts as the backbone of effective teams. Preschool staff collaborate and work harmoniously when they respect and trust each other. Team building activities strengthen relationships between teachers by establishing this fundamental trust.
Promotes healthy communication
Effective team building activities promote healthy communication between staff members. These activities help staff members know one another, create a better understanding of each other's styles, and build bonds of trust. As a result, members learn to concentrate on what they have in common instead of how different they are.
Improves teachers' performance
Some team building activities encourage collaboration and sharing complex tasks. Staff can apply these skills in real life while at work. For example, they can work together on lesson planning, where each teacher contributes their unique skills and expertise. This way, they complement each other to deliver their best and realize the preschool’s vision and mission.
Encourages innovation
Team building encourages creativity and innovation among preschool teachers. Activities promote collaboration and hands-on problem-solving. Therefore, preschool staff who work closely together operate more creatively and generate plenty of ideas for growth. They can quickly brainstorm new ideas to set the childcare program on a positive growth trajectory.
Guide to Build a Collaborative and Resilient Childcare Team
A free guide with strategies to build and retain a collaborative childcare team.
What are the best team building activities for preschool teachers?
The best team building activities for preschool teachers are affordable, easy to organize, and encourage genuine collaboration without feeling overly forced. For many programs, team building experiences happen during just a handful of training or in-service days. Training prioritizes business first, but you can incorporate team building games throughout the day as productive brain breaks. Here are some unique, valuable, and affordable ideas to try.
Fact bingo
Ahead of your next big training day, ask everyone to send in two to three facts about themselves that their colleagues don’t already know. Assemble them on a large grid (similar to a bingo card), and give each person a copy of the grid at the start of the day. The goal is to identify who each fact belongs to.
This will encourage people to break out of their immediate teaching teams and have conversations with other people. At the end of the day, give out prizes for people who fill in the most squares or achieve bingo.
Telephone Pictionary
This fun and creative game pushes people out of their comfort zone. It works best in groups of five to six people. Start by giving everyone a blank piece of paper and a pen.
To kick the game off, everyone writes a sentence at the very top of their paper. Everyone passes their paper to the right. The next person reads the sentence silently and draws a picture of the sentence. After drawing the picture, they fold the sentence backward so the next person cannot see it. When everyone finishes drawing, you pass your papers to the right again. This time, the person sees the picture and writes a sentence describing the image. Before passing the paper on to the next person, they fold the image backward again, so only the sentence shows.
The game continues like this until everyone takes a turn with each paper, or you run out of space. Then, spend time reading through the sentences and images to laugh at the silly misunderstandings along the way.
Pro tip: People may quickly claim they have no drawing skills, but you can reassure them that skill level does not matter. In fact, if people draw too realistically, it makes the sentence writing too easy. Encourage people to draw small pictures to fit several on a single page, and remind them not to overthink it!
Walk and talk
Take advantage of brain and body breaks by matching people up to go on quick walks together. Depending on the size of your team, you can match people up in groups of two to three and send them out for a stroll around the building or the block. You can even give people a conversation prompt or question to discuss during their walk.
Here are some question prompts you can use:
- If you could live anywhere on the planet and take everything that you love with you, where would you choose to live?
- What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
- If you had to eat one meal every day for the rest of your life, what would it be?
- What would the title of your autobiography be?
- What fictional family would you join as a member?
- What does your ideal day off look like?
Hold a quick debrief when everyone gets back by asking each team member to share one thing they learned about their walking partner.
Obstacle course
An obstacle course serves as a great way to perk up after a lunch break and give everyone a chance to get some fresh air. Set up a simple obstacle course for your team to traverse. You can use jump ropes as balance beams, milk crates to step or jump over, or hula hoops as stepping stones. Do not worry; the obstacle course does not need to be too elaborate or challenging.
Pair people up in groups of two, and then blindfold one person. The person without the blindfold helps guide the blindfolded person through the course. This provides a great way for your team to practice their verbal communication and active listening skills.
Deserted island
Instruct everyone to split up and gather three items from their classrooms, without further instruction on how they’ll be used. When everyone returns, break them into small groups.
Tell the groups that they are now stuck on a deserted island together, and the items they just retrieved are all they have to survive. Give everyone time to brainstorm how they’ll use their items to survive and share.
Have groups take turns sharing their funny, resourceful, and absurd survival stories.
What are good virtual team building activities for preschool teachers?
Good virtual team building activities for preschool teachers include virtual scavenger hunts, online trivia games, and conversational icebreakers like two truths and a lie. Virtual team building involves games or exercises you do remotely to build stronger bonds. This approach offers convenience and saves time and money, making it ideal for distributed or hybrid teams.
Virtual scavenger hunt
Scavenger hunts are a popular team building activity and can be easily translated to a virtual environment. Using a video conferencing tool like Zoom, instruct participants to go find common household items and show it to the group on screen. The first person to find the item gets a point. Examples of items include a kitchen utensil, their favorite snack, something blue, or something soft.
Trivia
A virtual trivia session is a great way to test your team’s knowledge and can be played in teams or individually. The format can be as simple as coming up with a series of questions based around a theme or you can create a powerpoint presentation or use an online trivia platform like Kahoot! You can even include trivia questions related to your program or team members to add an element of personalization. Examples of questions include, “What year did your program start?” or “Which staff member has worked at your center the longest?”.
Two truths and a lie
This is a common icebreaker activity that allows your team to learn more about each other. First, ask each team member to come up with three facts about themselves—two that are true, and one that is false. Then have everyone take turns listing their three facts aloud. Encourage everyone else to vote on which one is the lie. Chances are, new insights about your staff will be revealed in this simple activity!
How can you promote ongoing team building in a childcare program?
You can promote ongoing team building in a childcare program by creating peer recognition systems, organizing regular staff potlucks, and planning accessible post-work outings. Committing to team culture requires more than just one or two in-service days a year. Here are some ideas to create a culture of team building every day.
High fives
Create a system in which teammates can give each other recognition for their hard work. This could be virtual or handwritten. If you have a weekly email you send out to your staff, consider including the high fives there. You can request your staff submit their high fives to you over email (or using a free Google form if you want them to be anonymous).
Alternatively, if you prefer a low-tech approach, create a dropbox where teammates can write and share their high fives. You can then display them on a staff bulletin board to ensure everyone sees the positive feedback.
Team potluck
Recognizing special holidays, milestones, and birthdays builds morale, but many childcare programs lack a large budget for catering. Consider scheduling the occasional potluck for your team to come together and celebrate with food.
Keep in mind that asking people to contribute can sometimes cause a financial burden, and people will not always feel comfortable sharing if they lack the resources to provide food. Think about ways to ensure this activity relieves stress rather than causing it. For example, depending on the size of your team, you could pick one day a month to celebrate all birthdays and milestones together, rather than hosting multiple individual events.
Family-friendly, post-work outing
Planning social events outside of work hours presents challenges because everyone manages a variety of obligations once they clock out. Think about local, convenient, and inclusive outings you and your team can schedule. Does your town have an outdoor skating rink you can visit in the winter for an after-work skate? When the weather turns warm, can you find a free evening outdoor concert where you can set up a group picnic?
Book club
If you have bookworms in your childcare program, consider creating a book club. You can focus on education-related books or select genres completely unrelated to your work. If you feel concerned about the commitment level, try an article club that features a longer, meatier article each month. If you can arrange lunch schedules and coverage so the club discusses their reading over lunch, even better! If that proves impossible, your members will at least have engaging topics to discuss in passing in the teacher break room.
Walking/jogging club
Walk, run, or jog—there’s something for every fitness level. Once a week or month, schedule time for teammates who want to walk, run, or jog together. This supports everyone’s fitness goals, while also giving teammates a chance to chat in a casual setting. This remains completely optional, but your walking club might even decide to sign up for a 5k together and run as a team.
Frequently asked questions
Q: How often should a childcare program run team building activities?
A: A childcare program should run formal team building activities during training days two to three times a year. You can also incorporate smaller, informal team building exercises—like "high fives" or brief icebreakers—into your weekly staff meetings to maintain ongoing engagement.
Q: What makes a team building activity successful for early educators?
A: A successful team building activity for early educators is inclusive, low-pressure, and directly fosters trust or communication. It should respect staff members' time constraints and accommodate different physical abilities and comfort levels.
Q: Can team building activities improve staff retention in childcare programs?
A: Yes, regular team building activities improve staff retention. They help establish a positive workplace culture where educators feel valued, heard, and connected, which significantly increases long-term job satisfaction and reduces turnover.
Create a supportive team culture year-round
Building a cohesive and functioning team does not happen overnight; it takes time and dedicated attention. Effective team building activities promote collaboration, healthy communication, and trust among your staff. All of these elements lead to a positive team environment that benefits everyone at your childcare program, including the children and their families.
