Year 7 In-take Day at Welling School
We was back again at Welling School today for a team-building event. Normally when we provide team building packages it's for a corporate hire when the company wants to offer some respite for employees, they have a wave of new staff and need them to bond or just want to throw a party for them and their family. This one was a little different though...
This team building package was for the new year 7 in-take for the school. The school identified early on that this year group was one of the most unlucky when it came to Covid; Having missed a lot of school time by working from home, missed out on leavers parties, proms, residentials and more besides! All of this meant that the children didn't have much recent experience in bonding or practice in making friends - Not exactly socially awkward, but a little out of practice in learning how to approach new people and start talking.
With the prospect of secondary school an intimidating one for many children, the School reached out to us and asked if we could put togehter a team building package suitable for the new year group they was expecting at the start of the new school year.
This was being held in the school holiday so they didn't expect a huge up-take, but couldn't be sure - Making it difficult to gauge how much equipment would actually be needed. We proposed a mixture of skill based games with inflatables that have a high "through-put"; With a different group of strangers and them not wanting to be deemed "un-cool" a bouncy castle probably wasn't the right choice for children ready to start growing-up. With the uncertainty of the up-take the assault courses and slides seemed like a good option as they are great with a mature age-group, can have some fun with light competition and also perfect for managing turns really quickly.
The skill based games help them focus and actually try to "win" the game, adding a low level amount of stakes to the game to keep them engaged. It's quite telling as well for the teachers to see which children encourage their new found friends, which ones laugh and who takes the game very seriously. It provides them an early peek at the year group and identify types of behaviour early-on.
Welling really is a special school for us, we host out own inflatable events here, have strong connections with the school (we used to go to this School ourselves when we was much younger), provide inflatables for their sports days and help with charity events. It's probably the school we have the most business with throughout the year and we always do our level best to provide the type of service they have come to expect from us.
The mixture of games and inflatables to bounce and slide on went down exactly as planned. The school had a larger turn-out than they expected and was grateful of the equipment provided being able to cope with demand. They ran several sessions over the course of a week, splitting up groups into different time slots, but the over-all feedback was that the inflatable team building package was by far the most exciting and stimulating part of the project.
A pretty unique team building booking for us, but a rewarding one that worked well for the school!
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