The Epitome of Teamwork

Today was our 100th Day of school. I wanted to do some different activities with the kids-something fun! We did a lot of science-related things-estimating and then finding out how full a cup gets with 100 drops of water (no one was even close with their prediction). We weighed unpopped and popped popcorn to see which weighed more and did an activity with 100 candy hearts.

My favorite part of the day was the 100 Cup Teamwork challenge. I've never done this with a class before. I split them up into teams and there were no rules other than they had to use all 100 cups in some sort of tower. I timed them and then the other teams competed to see if they could beat that time.

Now normally I am not a fan of the "Everybody Wins" mentality. I worked in a daycare center years ago and the owner insisted if you played musical chairs you had to do it without removing any chairs. The music stops and everyone sits down--yay! How boring! I think it's really important for kids to learn how to lose-personally, I think that attitude is doing more harm to the kids than good. Healthy competition teaches you a lot. Losing teaches you a lot too!

That being said....my heart smiled a bit today. At first the class was cheering for particular classmates. "Let's go 'Johnny', lets go". Then I heard this (please excuse the messiness of the background-it's been a looonng week!)

They all just started chanting "Let's go everybody, let's go". What a great moment!

I know they learned a bit about how hard it is to stack 100 cups :), but I also think they learned a little bit about teamwork today.