Learning to Collaborate Through Interactive Play: Group Activities for Schools and Kindergartens

Discover how interactive play can help children practice teamwork, communication and collaborative problem-solving through activities where everyone contributes to a shared result.

Learning to work with others is an important part of a child’s development. In a classroom or kindergarten group, children constantly encounter situations where they need to listen to each other, explain their ideas, take turns, make decisions and work toward a common goal.

These skills are difficult to develop through explanation alone. Children need opportunities to practice them.

Interactive play creates an environment where collaboration becomes part of the activity itself. Instead of simply being told to “work as a team,” children receive a task that requires them to communicate, distribute roles and coordinate their actions.

Interactive solutions from UTS Play can be used to organize such activities in schools and kindergartens, combining learning, movement and teamwork.

Why Collaborative Play Matters

Group activities give children a practical reason to communicate.

When several participants share one task, they need to decide what to do first, who will perform each action and how they will respond when something does not work as expected.

Depending on the children’s age and the activity, this can help them practice:

• listening to other participants;

• expressing their own ideas;

• taking turns;

• distributing roles and responsibilities;

• coordinating actions;

• making decisions together;

• solving problems as a group;

• discussing the result.

The focus shifts from individual performance to a shared objective: we need to find a solution together.

From Playing Next to Each Other to Playing Together

There is an important difference between several children using the same play area and children actually collaborating.

Simply placing children around an interactive installation does not automatically create teamwork. The activity needs a shared goal.

For example, instead of asking each child to complete the same task independently, a teacher can create a challenge in which one child performs an action, another observes what happens, a third suggests the next step and the group decides together how to continue.

The interactive environment becomes a space for communication and experimentation.

Activity 1: Build a Landscape Together with iSandBOX

With iSandBOX, children can physically reshape sand while the interactive system visualizes changes in the landscape.

A teacher can give the group a common task:

“Let’s create a landscape with a mountain, a valley and a river.”

Before touching the sand, children discuss how they are going to approach the challenge.

Roles can be distributed within the group. One child creates the mountain, another works on the valley, another observes how the landscape changes, while another checks whether all elements of the task have been completed.

The roles can then be switched.

The important part is that individual actions influence the same landscape. If one participant changes part of it, the others may need to adapt their work.

After completing the activity, the teacher can ask:

What did we decide first? Did we have different ideas? How did we choose what to do? Did someone need help? What would we change if we tried again?

In this way, a geography-related activity can also become an exercise in communication and teamwork.

Activity 2: One Team, Different Roles

Interactive activities do not require every child to perform the same action at the same time.

Instead, a teacher can intentionally assign different responsibilities.

For example, a small team can include:

The Player — performs the main interactive action.

The Observer — watches what changes on the screen or in the interactive environment.

The Adviser — suggests what the player could try next.

The Coordinator — makes sure everyone has an opportunity to contribute.

After several minutes, children rotate roles.

This simple structure helps prevent one confident participant from taking over the entire activity. It also demonstrates that contributing to a team does not always mean performing the most visible action.

Observing, suggesting, explaining and coordinating are also meaningful parts of teamwork.

Activity 3: Solve the Challenge Together

Interactive walls and floors can be used for activities where children need to react to visual elements, complete tasks or achieve a shared objective.

Instead of turning the activity into a competition between individual players, the teacher can establish a collective challenge.

For example:

“Can the whole team complete the task before the time runs out?”

Before starting, children have a short planning period. They decide where each participant will stand, who will focus on which part of the interactive area and how they will communicate during the activity.

After the first attempt, the group discusses what worked and what did not.

Then they try again.

The second attempt is important because children can immediately apply what they learned from the first one. Collaboration becomes a process of planning, acting, evaluating and improving.

Activity 4: Create One Story as a Group

Creative interactive activities can also encourage cooperation.

With Living Drawings, for example, children can create drawings that become part of an interactive digital environment.

Instead of asking everyone to create an unrelated picture, the teacher can give the group one shared theme:

“Let’s create an underwater world together.”

The children first discuss what their world needs. One may draw a fish, another a sea creature, another an object or character.

The challenge is not only to draw something individually but to decide how each contribution fits into the group's common idea.

For older children, the activity can be expanded: the group can invent a short story about the world they created and decide together what happens to its characters.

Activity 5: Explain It to Your Team

Collaboration also means being able to communicate information clearly.

A teacher can divide children into small groups and give one participant information or a task that the others do not initially know.

The child then needs to explain what the group should do without completing the task alone.

For example, during an iSandBOX activity, one child can receive the instruction:

“Your team needs to create two high areas with a lower valley between them.”

The child explains the goal to the others, while the team decides how to build it.

The activity encourages children to translate an instruction into their own words, listen carefully and ask questions when something is unclear.

Activity 6: Change the Leader

Leadership can also become part of the learning experience.

During a longer interactive activity, the teacher can appoint one child as the team leader for a short period. The leader does not perform every action. Instead, their role is to listen to suggestions, help distribute tasks and keep the group focused on the objective.

After several minutes, another child becomes the leader.

Rotating leadership gives different children an opportunity to experience both sides of collaboration: guiding a group and supporting someone else’s decisions.

It also helps demonstrate that leadership is not simply about telling others what to do. It involves listening, organizing and helping the team reach a shared result.

The Teacher’s Role: Ask, Don’t Solve

In collaborative activities, the teacher does not necessarily need to provide the solution immediately.

When a group encounters a problem, questions can be more useful:

“What are you trying to achieve?”

“Does everyone agree with this idea?”

“Who has another suggestion?”

“How could you divide this task?”

“What happened after you changed that?”

“What could you try differently?”

These questions keep responsibility for the activity with the children while helping them structure their discussion.

Adapt Activities to Different Ages

Collaborative play can be adapted for both kindergarten and school environments.

For younger children, tasks should be simple and concrete. Groups can consist of two or three participants, roles can change quickly, and the teacher can provide more guidance.

For older children, challenges can become more complex. They can include planning stages, larger teams, specific responsibilities and reflection after the activity.

The same interactive equipment can therefore support different formats depending on the age of the children and the educational objective.

The Result Is More Than Completing the Game

The educational value of collaborative interactive play is not limited to whether children successfully complete a particular task.

The process itself matters.

Did they listen to each other?

Did everyone have an opportunity to participate?

How did they handle different ideas?

Were they able to change their plan?

What helped them achieve the result?

Interactive technology provides immediate visual and physical feedback, but the discussion around the activity turns that experience into a broader learning opportunity.

Interactive Play as a Space for Collaboration

Schools and kindergartens increasingly need learning environments where children can do more than receive information. They need opportunities to explore, communicate, make decisions and work with others.

Interactive equipment can support this approach by creating shared experiences in which children’s actions have visible consequences.

A sandbox can become a collaborative experiment. An interactive wall can become a team challenge. A creative activity can become a shared project.

The technology creates the environment. The educational scenario turns it into an opportunity to learn how to work together.

Explore UTS Play interactive solutions for schools and kindergartens and discover new ways to combine learning, movement and collaborative play.

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