Quick Start Activities

Using the Risk Taking Notes & Connection Cards

Working with Risk Taking Notes and Connection Cards:

In the back of this book, you will find the Connection Cards and Risk Taking Notes. These cards provide you with two tools that can help establish an atmosphere of teamwork in your group and aid in debriefing an activity or experience. These cards are also great ice breakers for the beginning of a day together. The most effective way to use these cards is to photocopy or cut them out. To start your activity, choose one of the decks of cards:

• Risk Taking Cards: These notes contain quotes or stories to inspire taking a positive risk. You can use these cards to inspire the group, start a conversation or debrief an experience by asking how this quote or story relates to their experience. These notes can be found in Appendix B.
• Connection Cards: These cards contain sharing starters for getting a group to share their ideas, feelings, or thoughts about a particular experience or about the day in general. These cards can be found in Appendix C.

Quick Start Activity

After you have chosen your deck of cards, place them in a bag. Have each member of the group choose a Toobeez piece and then sit in a circle, either in chairs or on the floor.

Place one Toobeez tube connected to one ball in the middle of the circle. Then have one person pull a card from the bag. Have that person read the card and share their ideas about the quote or story. When finished, have the person connect their Toobeez piece to the Toobeez in the middle of the circle. Only the person who is connecting his or her piece to the structure in the middle of the circle can speak; everyone else should listen and give the person speaking their full attention. The person then puts his or her card back in the bag, and the next person chooses a card from the bag and continues the process.

After everyone has had the chance to share, return to those people who passed and see if they would like to share now. Then point out the structure in the middle of the circle and say, “Thank you for sharing your thoughts, feelings and ideas. This structure represents….” and fill in what it represents based on which activity you are using. If this is a general activity, then you can say the structure represents what teamwork looks like or that it symbolizes the group’s work together. Then describe what you see or ask the group to describe how this structure represents your work together. Encourage the group and point out that thinking in new ways can make us more effective as a team and as individuals.

Here are some useful tips for this activity:

• Only the person with the card speaks
• No put downs (both verbal and non-verbal)
• Everything said in the circle, stays in the circle
• Everyone has the right to pass
• If someone does not want to share, ask the person if he or she is willing to connect the Toobeez piece to the structure in the center.

These cards provide fun and meaningful ways to bring the lessons of these teambuilding experiences back to your everyday work with your children, teens or adults.