There are a lot of awesome teambuilding books out there.  Check at your local library.  I found a ton of them at ours.  You can also just google &quot;teambuilding&quot; and you will get a lot of ideas too.  For the first two years, we often tried to do a quick activity either at the beginning, end, or in the middle of practice as a break.  It&#39;s a great thing to do, breaks it up a bit.  I think one of the key things is to tell your team not to over think the directions, don&#39;t assume there are rules that aren&#39;t said.  For example, one year, the teamwork exercise we did was, surprisingly, almost EXACTLY like an activity I had done with my team at one of our final practice sessions, right before the tournament.  I couldn&#39;t believe it.  However, when I had done this with my team, there had been one more rule added in there, that made it slightly different from what they were asking them to do at the tournament.  So, they assumed it was like the other one and made it a little bit harder on themselves than they had to.  I am sure it was confusing to anyone else in the room but me!  Anyway, the point is, they want to show the judges that they can work together, delegate, give each person a voice, figure out problems together, etc.  Check the rubric in the back of the coach manual and read this to them.  Tell them, this is part of what FLL is about, learning to work together as a team, stand on each other&#39;s shoulders, value and be open to the contributions and opinions of others.  We talk about this at most of our meetings.  Especially when the kids are getting stuck, or disagreeing over something, or feeling frustrated with each other (which of course will happen in any group!).  In the end, you can&#39;t really plan for this one.  It has nothing at all to do with how well they do the activity, as it does with &quot;how&quot; they do the activity, if you know what I mean.<div>
<br></div><div>Sonya in Harrisonburg</div><div><br></div><div><br><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 7:50 PM, David and Susan Brown <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:[log in to unmask]"><a href="/cgi-bin/wa?LOGON=A3%3D1010%26L%3DVADCFLL-L%26E%3Dquoted-printable%26P%3D1233711%26B%3D--001636c9236fd22dcd0492895c36%26T%3Dtext%252Fhtml%3B%2520charset%3Dwindows-1252%26pending%3D" target="_parent" >[log in to unmask]</a></a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">I’m a new coach and wanted to try a few practice teamwork
challenges with my group. What kinds of tasks have they asked kids to do at past
tournaments?</span></font></p>

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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">Thanks for your help!</span></font></p>

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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">Susan</span></font></p>

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