Team Building with Marshmallows

We've got a couple little girls who have been struggling with the idea of working together lately.  There has been a lot of yelling, fighting and tattling in our house lately, and I've been getting a little tired of it.  So I came across this idea and thought it might be worth a try.

The idea was for the girls to work TOGETHER to build a tower out of toothpicks and marshmallows.  I told them they could eat one marshmallow for every inch high their tower stood in the end, but there would be no marshmallows to eat if there was fighting.  And do you know, it worked!  Well, it mostly worked.

They started out working together--Emma trying to build something, and Ashlyn getting marshmallows all laid out and ready for her.  But soon Ashlyn wanted to build something too.  So in the end, they ended up building their own structures, but they stacked them on top of each other to make one big tower.  So it was still kind of like teamwork. 

And there wasn't any fighting!  No bickering!  Ashlyn got frustrated a few times and complained that it was too hard, but Emma encouraged her to keep trying, and she did! 

So in the end they earned 10 marshmallows for eating.  (Their tower was about 10 inches tall.)  Plus I threw in a few extra because they had worked so well together.  Sweet success!