No, Seriously, You’ll Love My Next Activity

Two nights before we were to leave for Indonesia, I panicked. I looked on the itinerary that the staff from Telanus Beach had put together and saw again all the blocks of time that said “Team-building activities lead by ICS staff.”

ICS staff; that’s me.

I stayed up late researching and compiling what I thought would be some fun, age-appropriate group activities. On our first evening at Telunas Beach, we played the first of my activities. I put the kids in two lines holding hands. I squeezed the hand of the first kid in each line one, two or three times. Each of them was supposed to pass the correct number of squeezes down his or her line as quickly as possible. Depending on how may squeezes that last person in the line felt he or she was to grab one of three objects that I had put on the table on the other side of the room.

Yeah, it was about as lame as it sounds.

And my activities only got lamer after that.

That same day, we gave the kids some free time. A lot of them spent the majority of the time on the beach and in the water messing around with Telunas Beach’s one surfboard. Other’s spent the time trying to drum up the courage to jump off the eighteen-foot platform. Three of the boys became totally enamored with fishing from the dock.

My co-leaders and I were surprised at how well the kids were getting along and using their free time. We thought to ourselves, if they keep exhibiting this level of maturity and independence, we might be able to dole out larger and larger blocks of free time.

In other words, we wouldn’t have to do any more of Mr. VanNoord’s lame team-building activities.

In the end, all those blocks of time on the itinerary that said “Team-building activities: ICS staff” we pretty much gave to the kids as free time. After all they were on a beach hemmed in by the dense Indonesia jungle. How much trouble could they get into? Furthermore, we were the only guests at the resort for most of the week, so we didn’t to worry about our kids disturbing other paying guests.

Open space to run around and lots of free time: it’s a combination our Hong Kong students don’t get to experience very often. We were happy to give it to them.