A Game of Games

The Meadow room teachers and I have been talking about engaging some children who want to play good guy/bad guy games, which sometimes get too rough. This has been a perennial topic for teachers who work with four and five year old children. With our whole-school focus on relationship as our umbrella project this year, Nancy and Robyn are focusing on the idea of bringing everyone into connection. Intellectually, that can seem more challenging when play revolves around lightsabers and battles, but in another way we can understand this play as designed for connecting with others, sometimes quite literally by banging bodies together. 

So a group came to the studio to think about fighting games. Some of the children play these games regularly and some do not. I asked the children "What games do you like to play?"

"Thomas the train"

"Angry Birds"

the game pieces

"These are the games we play;
Robbers,
Star Wars,
Power Rangers,
Ninjago,
Soldiers Will Protect You,
Phone Break,
Dinosaurs,
Spy Kids,
Pirates,
and
All the Weapons"

So while drawing and talking about playing, an idea emerged to make a board game that encompasses all of the pretending games. Playing pieces hop around the board and land on certain spaces. In each space there is a symbol for a kind of fighting game. So if you land on Pirates, we all get up and fight like pirates for a few minutes. The next player might land on dinosaurs or Thomas the Train, and everyone will pretend about those for a while..

"fight the Foogly Monsters!"

"fight Darth Vader!"