Team Building Through Physical Challenges – A Complete Toolkit

Teamwork is critical to the success of any group—students, athletes, businesspeople, community members, and others. Team Building Through Physical Challenges: A Complete Tool Kit, Second Edition, takes a proactive approach to building teams as it explains the concepts of team building, shows how to set up teams to facilitate growth, and provides 67 mentally and physically challenging games and activities that will foster team building and the development of numerous social and emotional skills. These activities are an ideal way to start the school year, a sport season, corporate training, an adventure trip, or any endeavor that requires working together.

New and updated materials for this resource include the following:

• Updated content on how to implement the activities
• A new emphasis on social and emotional learning
• A new web resource with video demonstrations, reproducibles, and a sample team-building course outline

Team Building Through Physical Challenges features 67 ready-to-use, field-tested activities and challenges for introductory, intermediate, and advanced levels. They are presented in a clear and practical format that addresses setup, rules, equipment needs, and variations for each challenge. The web resource offers video clips showing team building in action, as well as reproducible forms to make implementation easier. The web resource includes challenge and organizer cards for all challenges; these cards give the teams all the information needed to begin the activities.

Another important feature of the book is the rationale it offers to obtain support and funding for the implementation of team building in schools, organizations, and businesses.

Participants will focus on and build a variety of skills and character traits:

• Trust building
• Conflict resolution
• Leadership
• Self-control
• Collaborative problem-solving
• Effective communication
• Critical thinking
• Creativity
• Optimistic thinking
• Listening skills
• Appropriate risk-taking
• Resilience
• Growth mindset

Team Building Through Physical Challenges assembles the best team- and character-building resources developed by the authors since the first edition of this popular book was published, plus new activities and supporting material. The authors are recognized experts in the field who have been creating, compiling, and experimenting with team-building activities for nearly 50 years.

Team Building Through Physical Challenges is the only comprehensive book of team-building activities that focus on physical challenges. Through the clear instruction and guidance on team building, the useful web resource, and the exciting and challenging activities, participants will learn to become respectful competitors, valuable problem solvers, selfless leaders, and high-character members of their school, team, company, or community.

Leigh Anderson currently teaches in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, where she applies many of the concepts in this book. In addition to her elementary classroom and intervention experience, Leigh taught at the graduate level in the teaching and learning master’s program at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota. This is the third book dealing with best practices in education that Leigh has coauthored, and she has presented both nationally and internationally. Leigh holds a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction.

Daniel W. Midura is a former physical education specialist and coordinator in the Roseville Area School District in Roseville, Minnesota. Now retired, Midura was a physical education specialist for more than 40 years. In that time he has presented at more than 200 conferences and workshops and coauthored four books. He was named the Minnesota Physical Education Teacher of the Year in 1994 and was awarded the 1995 National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) Teacher of the Year for Minnesota, among other teaching awards and honors. He has served as president of the Minnesota Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (MNAHPERD), and he was an adjunct faculty member at Bethel University and Saint Mary's University.

Donald R. Glover has taught physical education, including adapted physical education, since 1967 at the preschool, elementary, secondary, and postsecondary levels. He currently teaches adaptive physical education methods at the University of Wisconsin at River Falls.

In 1981, Glover was recognized as Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year, and he was named the Minnesota Adapted Physical Education Teacher of the Year in 1989. He has written eight books, published numerous magazine and journal articles on physical education and sport, and been a clinician at more than 100 workshops and clinics.

Glover earned his master’s degree in physical education from Winona State University in 1970. A former president of MNAHPERD, he is a member of SHAPE America and the Minnesota Education Association.