The Sunday Funday Marshmallow Challenge
Written by Anjum Shaikh, November 23, 2018
Marshmallow! Wow, the name sounds as sweet as the taste itself and my mouth is already watering. Well, who doesn’t like to eat marshmallows? But for a change, this time we used marshmallows not to eat but to experiment with a different kind of learning. Last Sunday, our Patang Scholars participated in a fantastic activity – the marshmallow challenge.
Wondering what this challenge is all about and how it is played? Well, this exercise is fun and quite popular among corporate employees, students, and even kindergartners. It is known to encourage the participants to collaborate, innovate and work in teams. The game is played with a resource kit that contains 20 spaghetti sticks, one yard of tape, one yard of string and one marshmallow – materials used to build the tallest freestanding structure in a span of 18 minutes.
This activity is helpful in making team members learn, collaborate on ideas and work together in a challenging environment. It also enables participants to put their thinking hats on and apply innovative and creative thinking abilities in order to accomplish the final goal.
On Sunday, the students were grouped into four different teams. They were all excited and within no time, the challenge began. The stopwatch was on and the teams rushed into building the standing structure made out of spaghetti sticks. Each team was trying hard to make the structure stand using different ideas and creativity.
All the members contributed and helped each other in building the structure. Time was running out, and none of the teams were successful in making the structure stand tall so far. Mrs. Pervin Bhasin started the countdown, and the teams were asked to stop on the count of 1 and move away from the tower. As soon as they moved, the structures fell down. The class sighed in disappointment. All the teams tried really hard, yet they could not think of a way to make a spaghetti structure stand firm on the tables. However, with an additional time of 5 minutes, one team was successful in making the structure stand. The team was announced as the winner!
An interesting fact to note is that kindergartners surprisingly perform the best in this challenge. They create the tallest and most innovative structures. The reason behind this is that kids do not compete for power nor are they bound by any experience. They are comfortable with experimenting and use an iterative approach, where they repeatedly try to build the tower, unlike corporate professionals or management graduates who spend too much time planning rather than execution.
After the activity, the students were asked to discuss their learning and share the same with the class. Teams came up on the stage and spoke about the challenges and difficulties they faced – they highlighted the importance of a strong base without which it is impossible for any structure to stay straight and the importance of time, which once lost, will never come back. Most importantly, they realized the power of collaboration and how working in teams enables creative-thinking abilities. One of the students compared spaghetti sticks to resources such as teachers and mentors who prepare students to succeed in their lives and marshmallows to the life goals each one of us wishes to fulfill. The challenge itself is that life is not going to be smooth so one needs to be prepared to work with different kinds of people in different working environments with limited resources.
The Patang Scholars were thrilled to have an activity in the classroom which encouraged them to think creatively and reflect on life in a deeper sense. In the end, all of them were given a fresh marshmallow to eat which sweetened their day just a bit more. It was truly a fun day that will be remembered by all of us.
