My organisation is inviting our staff to bring their children, nephews/nieces, grandchildren etc in to work for one day. This is a scheme which is organised in conjunction with schools around the country as part of their careers advice programme.
The children will be between the ages of 11-16 and we expect to have about 30 of them. We would like to make the day interesting for them as well as informative.
I can handle the informative side but would like to ask if anyone has got any ideas of activities that could help make the day fun as well.
All ideas welcome!
Alka Soni
3 Responses
Competition in teams to summarise the main learning points.
Hi there, I used to work with children and teenagers in the British Airways Community Learning Centre and we had to regularly organise activities such as the ones you describe. I remember that they always loved taskd with a competitive aspect. A treasure hunt or search for clues (in pairs or teams) can be used as a way to review information about the company and the different jobs they are learning about. Small prizes are always a bonus.
The other activity could be in the shape of allocating tasks to the children in teams, in the second part of the day, such as :
-make a drawing, write a poem, perform a mini-play about what you learnt. Thirdly, if it can be done, having someone videoing or taking funny photographs, with a digital camera, of the tasks in progress (possibly to be done by one or two of the older participants) can provide a great way to record the event.
Children at Work Day
Create a colourful pack which:
Details the differing business areas
Includes a quiz to be used at the end of the day
Gives the timetable of events
‘Interview the manager sheet’
Observation sheets
You could:
Tour of the differing business areas
Deliver a statutory training session like Health & Safety with video or manual handling techniques
You could get them to:
Create a logo for the business area
Create a report at the end of the day
At the end of the day:
Give out a goody bag – corporate give aways pens etc & sweets too
Present certificates to all
Send a letter to their home a few days later and thank them for their involvement.
I’ll mail you some of the material that my area put together.
‘Real’ work
It will depend on your company’s work – however, if you can try and get them to actually do some real work – or as near to it – they really enjoy it. … you don’t have to use their work, just tell them that you are….
My last company was a web-design company and we used to break the kids into small groups and pass them around the various teams who had designed tasks for them to ‘help out’ with a real piece of work. e.g. one team got them to review some competitor websites, another team had them cutting out pictures from a magazine to represent a client’s brief. I even had a few groups producing some training powerpoint slides. We then awarded prizes at the end of the day for their various tasks or funny things that had happened.
At an accountancy firm I used to work for we had a small group of kids delivering the post, sending emails, filling envelopes, entering information into time sheets (as well as a few other tasks) – and they loved it!
Annah