Team Building: Marshmallow Spaghetti Challenge

Getting your business’s or organization’s team together for a fun challenge can be invaluable.
By participating in an event or activity together, your staff can learn a great deal. A marshmallow
spaghetti challenge could be exactly what your team needs to come together and accomplish
your goals.

Using the Marshmallow Spaghetti Challenge for team building

What Is the Challenge?

The objective is fairly straightforward: Sub-teams within your team are challenged to construct
the tallest structure possible from using only 1 marshmallow, 20 spaghetti sticks, 1-yard of
string, and 1-yard of tape.

How the Challenge Is Beneficial

By working together to achieve this simple goal, your team members may discover basic
principles of design and engineering. More importantly, they will explore ways to work together
efficiently in order to reach a specified goal. They may discover strategies that enhance group
participation. The ability to support one another will certainly be reinforced.

Additionally, this kind of team building challenge is fun – and sometimes, a spirit of enjoyment is
lacking within an organization. If that is the case for your group, try coming together as a team
for a marshmallow spaghetti challenge. You could renew the enthusiasm that makes your team
great.

How it Works

This activity is not complicated, but it can be challenging. First, you will need to assemble the
items needed for each mini-team. Each group will require 20 sticks of uncooked spaghetti, one
standard-size marshmallow, a yard of masking tape, and a yard of string. You will also need
measuring tape and a stopwatch.

The teams are given 18 minutes to work with the materials and build the tallest freestanding
structure. They may break the spaghetti as needed, and they may also cut the string and tape.
The marshmallow however, cannot be cut, eaten, or altered in any way and must be positioned
at the top of the structure.

The teams may use as little or as much of the materials as they wish. Because the structure
must be freestanding, it cannot be supported by or suspended from another object.

Once 18 minutes have passed, you can measure each team’s structure. The tallest one wins as
long as it meets the criteria mentioned!