I'm excited to share a new tool with you today. It's not necessarily a new activity, but I've sourced new material that makes this activity more versatile (and frankly, more awesome). It's the Colored Spider Web and Bungee Box! Squeeeeee! I know that may not excite everyone as much as it does me, but I love the programming opportunities it opens up. Anytime I can add some color to an existing activity that allows me to put new parameters on existing rules or directions to change things up a bit gets me a tinge excited.

For example, the Vertical Spider Web pictured here takes me about 10-15 minutes to assemble if I'm putting it together by myself, which is not that big of a deal, but if I look at it through a different lens, I could actually turn this assembly process into an activity for the group. With two-different colors of pipe, I can now give a 'blueprint' of the structure to the group and tell half the group they can only touch the red pieces, and the other half the group they can only touch the yellow pieces. Then they build the structure together and we debrief how they worked together to build the foundation for the next activity. How did the process restrict them? How did they communicate with team members that had the other color? How did the boundaries/rules inhibit their efficiency? Are there any similarities to the real world from this experience? Etc...

Then we could move to the next challenge, which would be to pass a 35-foot rope through every opening in the web without touching the web. Now they are working together in a different fashion and building up to the bigger trust exercise.

Then, progressing even further, we could move towards passing people through the different openings without anyone touching the web. It's a nice sequence that builds on the skills from the previous activities. I love it!

From there, you could move it to the horizontal web, or what we call The Bunge Box or House Trap Activity. And again, lots of opportunities for tweaking and changing the activity with multiple colors. Here's tutorial video my friend Chris Cavert put together for me on how to assemble the Bungee Box.