n Snapshots by Sara Keiper. An alternate way to approach the coat-of-arms exercise, especially for those who arent familiar with or comfortable with the idea of a coat of arms, is to ask people to create a photo album. Each photo on the page describes in words or pictures something about different parts of your life. Categories could include something about your family, three words youd like to have said about you, where you grew up, a place you dream of visiting, three people who have influenced you the most, where you feel most at home and your favorite dessert. n Tower power by Rich Cotton, Wis. This is an active learning exercise that will provide a developing group the opportunity to cultivate relationship-building skills. 1. Divide into groups of three or four people who do not know each other well. 2. Distribute one magazine, one newspaper section, one pencil, one ten-inch piece of string and five paper clips to each group, giving at least one item to each person. 3. Read the following directions: You have just entered the Tower Culture, located in a very wet and often flooded area of the world. Homes in this area are in the form of a tower to keep the family up and out of the floods and away from certain reptiles or animals that may seek refuge inside. The family who uses their resources most efficiently in the form of the tallest tower is ascribed much honor, reverence and wisdom as leaders of the village. Each group is a family in a newly founded village. Each family member has a component needed for the building of your family tower. You have the power to decide how your component should be best used in building the tower. Your goal as a family is to build the tallest tower from the floor up, which will give you special privileges as the most respected and needed family. You have eight minutes to make decisions and complete the building of your family tower. The prestige of the family with the tallest tower will be translated into our culture in the form of not having to do the dishes all weekend. (Substitute another incentive if you are not at camp.) 4. Time them for eight minutes and tell them when two, four, six and eight minutes are up. 5. Measure the towers and declare the winning family. 6. Discussion questions: a. Which members participation was most helpful in the teams accomplishment of the task? Why? b. What behaviors seemed to hinder the teams efforts? c. What did you learn about yourself as you had to work with a very new group of people? (Discuss feelings of trust, whether they were active or passive in their participation, problems in communication, how they reacted to stress, and so on.) d. What did you learn about other team members? e. We will be working as a team in our learning, prayer and emotional support. What principles and guidelines can we follow to help us develop as a team as a result of what we learned from this simulation? Write these down for all to see on an overhead or chalkboard. —Small Group Idea Book
Posted on: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 21:45:49 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015