Prehistoric Man Activity

What was life like for prehistoric man?  They couldn't run to Wal-Mart to get supplies or to Food Lion to buy groceries, so what did they do?  The short answer is that they had to use the resources

that were directly available to them.

For this activity, I teamed up with our 6th grade social studies teacher.  Students would have to work together to create a shelter using only the resources available.
 The original plan had been for us to do this outside and use the things students found on the ground, but rainy conditions threw a kink into our plans.  Instead, we used items from our makerspace kit - popsicle sticks, bits of string, and pompoms to represent food and water.

Here's the activity:
Students were grouped together as strangers from nearby tribes that did not speak the same language.  They had to work together using hand gestures, facial expressions, and sounds (not words) to build a shelter for their group.

Popsicle sticks, bits of string, and a few other items were scattered all over the floor.  Each group was given an area that served as their settlement.  They could only use the resources in their area to create the shelter.  They were not allowed to remove items from the "land" of a neighboring tribe because doing so would cause a feud.

Most teams were successful in creating some sort of structure in the allotted time, but not all.  Teams without a strong leader or those who failed to find a way to communicate with one another struggled the most.