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Successful Cooperative Games Booth at a Local Holiday Fair!

December 27, 2016 by Suzanne Lyons


vic3                Image result for victorian christmas nevada city 2016

2016 is the first year that we hosted a booth selling cooperative board games at “Victorian Christmasâ€, our local holiday fair. This is Nevada City, California—a historic Gold Rush town that  comes alive over the holidays. Locals and tourists love the cheerful mood and appreciate the story-book atmosphere. Even if you are not given to sentimentality throughout the year it is hard to resist theA board game with owls and trees on it. charm of this event, with its horse-drawn carriage, chestnuts roasting, carolers, crafters-a-plenty in their pop-up store-fronts and, in many years, a bit of snow to frost the streets in glistening white. Forget your cares, it’s the holidays!

So, how was a booth selling cooperative board games received? Truly our CooperativeGames.com booth was super popular! It exceeded expectations. I (Suzanne Lyons, founder CooperativeGames.com) have been selling cooperative games through CooperativeGames.com since 2009. During that time, I have seen a big increase in the degree to which people are familiar with cooperative games, or at least are receptive to the concept. Seven years ago, cooperative games were a very esoteric genre, sometimes regarded with skepticism, as in “What a weird idea.â€

But at the holiday street fair this year, it was heartening to see how many people  know what cooperative games are, and have  played them, A board game with owls and trees on it.and are robust fans. There’s a lot of support for the whole idea of playing together not against each other. This year in 2016 many of us are looking for ways to bridge the gaps that divide us. It’s easy to see that cooperative games are a timely and effective method for getting there. And painless medicine to boot!A board game with owls and trees on it.

Besides running my own booth at our local holiday fair, in 2016 I helped The Lansing Peace Education Center with their own holiday fundraiser. They reported  success and satisfaction, as described in their testimonial below. To like-minded organizations: This is an invitation. If you are interested in running a cooperative games table at your local fundraising event, please contact me, Suzanne Lyons, at CooperativeGames.com. The best way to reach me is by email at [email protected]. As a curator of the best cooperative games for all ages and settings, my goal is to spread knowledge about cooperative play and cooperative games, and to help organizations that serve the common good tap the magic of cooperative play too.

We at the Greater Lansing (Michigan) Peace Education Center organized a table of cooperative games for our annual Alternative Holiday Sale. Thanks to Suzanne Lyons of Cooperativegames.com for helping us pull together a selection of delightful games for all ages. It was eye-opening to many people that such games exist! We were so pleased to be able to get the word out and help foster more fun, friendly game-playing in many homes and schools. Having a few copies of Suzanne’s book was an added bonus that gave us a chance to talk about the benefits of teaching cooperative play.

A board game with owls and trees on it.

 

 

 

A board game with owls and trees on it.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: cooperative games, cooperative play, victorian christmas

Cooperative Games Paradigm: The Circle Not the Triangle

December 16, 2016 by Suzanne Lyons


Many cooperative games are played in circles. I’m including one of my favorites A board game with owls and trees on it.below. It’s a classic cooperative game for kids and adults alike.

Even when not physically played in a circular formation, cooperative games are still all about circles. If cooperative games could be symbolized by a geometric shape, it would surely be the circle. In a circle, all points are equal.A board game with owls and trees on it. A board game with owls and trees on it.Compare the circle to the triangle. In a triangle, there is one position at the top. Many more   points are below.

When we join together to play a cooperative game, we embody the paradigm of the circle—not the triangle. And that feels GOOD in a world where hierarchical structures abound.

Knotty People

Materials:  None needed

Time Estimate: 15 minutes

Number of Players: 5 or more

Object of the Game: To form a human knot and untie it

Game Category: Active physical game

To Play: Players stand in a small circle. They place their right hands in front of them with their thumbs up, pointing toward the sky. Players use their other hand to A board game with owls and trees on it.
hold the thumb of anyone else in the circle except players standing immediately beside them to the right or left.

Now, the challenge is to untangle this human knot. Players can turn around, step over anyone, crawl anywhere, or do anything except let go.

With some coordination and focus, most knots can be untangled. If players just cannot do it after 10 minutes or so, they are “Knotty People,†which is okay in this case šŸ˜‰

If you like the game Twister you’ll love this game!

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: circle game, cooperative game

Cooperative Games for Thanksgiving 2016

November 21, 2016 by Suzanne Lyons


Thanksgiving is right around the corner. How about adding some cooperative games to your Thanksgiving celebration? Cooperative games are not only fun, but they facilitate happy and healthy relationships. I know of nothing better than playing cooperative games at family get-togethers to set a convivial mood and include everyone in the joy.

There are all kinds of cooperative games, as I describe on my website CooperativeGames.com https://cooperativegames.com/. For Thanksgiving, board games are very appropriate. How about bringing out some cooperative board games before dinner to keep guests haA board game with owls and trees on it.ppy while the cooks finish up in the kitchen? Or save them for relaxing after dinner when it’s time to get cozy on a full stomach.

What are the best cooperative games for kids? For adults? For mixed ages? For children ages 4-8, I recommend the classic Max the Cat. For older kids, Caves and Claws is one of many good choices. For kids and adults playing together, consider Pandemic. Shop for these and many more games on my website CooperativeGames.com

If board games are not your thing, play some party games. (Again look to CooperativeGames.com for ideas https://cooperativegames.com/fun-free/) Here are some

Thanksgiving-themed cooperative games that require no materials at all….

  1. Basket of Plenty

Players sit around the dinner table. Pass around a small basket (or bowl) full of dried flowers, fruits, or favorite things—a cornucopia of your own making. The group recites this poem:

Basket of plenty, around you go-

Where you stop, nobody knows.

But when you do, one of us will say

What he is thankful for this day.

 

  1. Gobble-Happy

A player leaves the room while those left behind hide small treats or funny objects. When the player returns, the group guides him or her to the treat by saying “gobble, gobble†louder and louder as the player gets closet to the prize. Gobble very softly or not at all when the player is “cold†and raise the gobbling to a happy cacophony as the player nears the sought-after object.

 

  1. Thanksgiving Joke-a-Thon

Put two strips of paper under each dinner plate. One strip has a joke, and the other has a punch line to a different joke. On each player’s turn, she reads her joke. The player who thinks he has the punch line reads it. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what the correct punch line is, but mismatched jokes and punch lines are part of the fun!  Here are some corny Thanksgiving jokes and punch lines you can use.

 

Why was the turkey the drummer in the band? 
Because he had the drumsticks.

If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring? 
Pilgrims.

What has feathers and webbed feet? 
A Turkey wearing scuba gear.

What key has legs and can’t open doors? 
A turkey.

What kind of vegetable do you like on Thanksgiving? 
Beets me!

Why can’t you take a turkey to church? 
Because they use such FOWL language.

Can a turkey jump higher than the Empire State Building? 
Yes – a building can’t jump at all.

Who is not hungry at Thanksgiving? 
The turkey because he’s already stuffed!

What does Dracula call Thanksgiving? 
Fangs-giving.

Which side of the turkey has the most feathers? 
The outside.

What kind of music did the Pilgrims like? 
Plymouth Rock.

Why did the police arrest the turkey?
They suspected it of fowl play.

What did the turkey say before it was roasted? 
Boy! I’m stuffed!

Where did the first corn come from? 
The stalk brought it.

How did the Mayflower show that it liked America? 
It hugged the shore.

Why did the turkey cross the road? 
It was the chicken’s day off.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!A board game with owls and trees on it.

 

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: cooperative games, Thanksgiving party ideas

Election Recovery Tip: Play a Cooperative Game

November 14, 2016 by Suzanne Lyons


The 2016 US presidential election was a display of sheer, unbridled competition. Huge stakes. Two sides, far apart. Winning was indeed everything. Losing sucked. But winning carried its own burden: winner’s disease—that schadenfreude that blinds one to the pain his own A board game with owls and trees on it.triumph causes other people. That’s not that good for the soul, and it’s not good practice for getting along with others.

Where do we go from here, now that the contest of the ages has come and gone and left us battered and polarized? That’s a rather huge question with a zillion serious answers. We’ll save that important discussion to those forums where we can intellectually engage.

Meanwhile I am here to suggest that one possible means of emotional recovery from the effects of the heightened competition we have been through is to play a cooperative game. Especially if you find yourself on opposite sides of the issue with those you love, consider playing a game where you are all on the same team. Before you know it, you’ll like each other again! It’s also good to play a cooperative game with your peeps, those you agree with, just coz we all need a taste of the peaceful and secure joy that comes from having fun together without the need to prove oneself smarter, luckier, or better than anyone else. Enough with the competition already!

Here is a game that is very physical but good for mixed ages. A board game with owls and trees on it.
For other free (and freeing!) cooperative games, check the Fun and Free section of CooperativeGames.com. https://cooperativegames.com/fun-free/ Or visit my store CooperativeGames.com for a curated collection of the best cooperative games, toys for cooperative play, board games and books. https://cooperativegames.com/

Blessings,
Suzanne Lyons
Owner CoopertiveGames.com

                                                                     Tug of Peace
Participants group themselves around a rope that has been tied in a knot—so the rope forms a circle. Players squat down around the rope, holding the rope with both hands. At the count of three, all players lean back and–using the energy of the group–they stand up. When everyone has stood up (and cheered), players can, on the count of three again, carefully lean back into a squat. In this game, the counterbalance support that players provide to one another is a graphic representation of mutual support and cooperation. It’s a different experience than traditional Tug-of-War, since everyone wins by working together.

Filed Under: Articles

Cooperative Games 101: What Are Cooperative Games and How Can They Help Education?

March 20, 2016 by Suzanne Lyons


What Is a Cooperative Game?

A board game with owls and trees on it.
Cooperative Games Exist for All Ages and Settings

Have you heard about cooperative games? Cooperative games are games based on cooperation rather than competition. There are cooperative games of all kinds for all ages and settings. Cooperative games range from board games to circle games to PE games to digital games and more. They are all based on the principle that it can be just as much fun—well, actually more fun—to play with each other than against each other!

While competitive games emphasize individual achievement (as measured by being “better†than others), cooperative games emphasize the joy and productivity that come from working together to achieve a group goal. A well-designed cooperative game assures that players will experience the heart-felt happiness that comes from being included in a safe and supportive community.  Also, a good cooperative game assures that players will practice and value pro-social skills such as sharing, encouraging one another, contributing, and giving and taking. Further, by its very nature, a good cooperative game will clearly demonstrate that cooperating with others is practical and productive.  That is, game participants discover through direct personal experience that “we’re better togetherâ€, that “many hands make light work†and “many heads are better than one.â€

Thus, well-designed cooperative games provide rich opportunities for experiential learning. They teach a valuable, pro-social lesson about the benefits of collaboration and they do it in a fun and natural way through direct personal experience.

A board game with owls and trees on it.
                                             Cooperative Games Teach Cooperation Through the Powerful Medium of Play

Cooperative Games in Education

Do cooperative games have a role in education? It is easy to see that they do. As described above, cooperative games motivate players to want to cooperate plus they teach the skills needed to cooperate and they help players recognize the value in cooperation versus constant competition. The desire and ability to cooperate with one’s peers has manifold applications in education as all teachers know. So cooperative games should rightfully be part of every teacher’s “bag of tricksâ€.

For example, consider cooperative learning. Cooperative learning is essential pedagogy because it improves educational outcomes, yet its effectiveness hinges on students’ willingness and ability to work together. By introducing students to cooperative games, which naturally and effortlessly teach cooperation, the teacher primes students for success in cooperative learning.

Thus cooperative games are a sensible and smart way teachers can prepare kids for wonderful cooperative learning, group work, and collaborative project-based learning experiences.

A board game with owls and trees on it.
Cooperative Games Can Teach Academic Skills

Besides paving the way for formal cooperative learning strategies, cooperative games can also be used to teach academic subjects. More and more educational cooperative games are being developed for classroom learning these days, as the concept of cooperative games is beginning to catch on at a large scale. Educational cooperative games combine the pedagogical power of play with the advantages of learning in small groups; thus they tap two major approaches to teaching and learning. With educational cooperative games, students can learn language, math, science or other academic content at the same time that they practice cooperating. (See CooperativeGames.com at https://cooperativegames.com/ for free classroom-ready games as well as games for purchase. Note that CooperativeGames.com is a general resource for educators looking for background, information, and professional development related to cooperative play.   CooperativeGames.com is a small business owned and operated by Suzanne Lyons, MA, MA, former classroom teacher and author of this article.)

The essential role of play in learning is well-documented. For young children especially, play is the primary activity by which learning takes place. Plato said over two thousand years ago: “Do not keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play.†Cooperative games are thus important for teachers to know about simply because play is so important in learning and cooperative games use the power of play. And this is in addition to all the benefits related to cooperation!

But we are not finished yet in our summary of the benefits of cooperative games in education. Another reason that cooperative games belong in every teacher’s tool kit is that they support the broad aims of social-and-emotional learning (SEL). SEL is increasingly recognized as essential education, necessary for the development of the whole child. According to Maurice Elias, director of Rutgers

A board game with owls and trees on it.
Cooperative Games Teach Kindness and Caring

University’s Social and Emotional Learning Lab, SEL is the process through which we learn to recognize and manage emotions, care about others, make good decisions, behave ethically and responsibly, and avoid negative behaviors. SEL is the needed complement to academic content learning, because students need more than academic information to grow into  happy, healthy, responsible adults successful in work and relationships. Clearly, cooperative games, which teach children how and why to get along together, help students build many underlying social-and-emotional competencies.

Besides preparing students for cooperative learning, teaching subject area knowledge, and building social-and-emotional competency, cooperative games relate to other areas of education, ranging from sustainability to special education. Indeed the applications of cooperative games to education are too many to discuss in a single blog post. You can check CooperativeGames.com for more extensive discussion.

However, this introduction to cooperative games in education would be utterly incomplete without discussing one more benefit: Cooperative games literally reduce aggressive behavior both during game play and afterwards too. This fact has been demonstrated in independent University research. (See “Cooperative Games: A Way to Modify Aggressive and Cooperative Behaviors in Young Children†by April K. Bay-Hinitz et al. in The Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1994.) The ability of cooperative games to not only increase pro-social skills but also reduce aggression has important implications for school climate.

More to the point, because playing cooperative games reduces aggression, cooperative games should be utilized on a wide scale—in every classroom and at different age levels—to prevent bullying.

Cooperative Games and Bullying

Bullying is a cruel torment which is all too common. Bullying produces moments of knife-sharp suffering during the school day and it can leave dull, aching pain that lasts a lifetime too. Kids who are victims of bullying are five times more likely to be depressed compared to their peers. Kids who bully suffer as well. Bullies are at high risk for serious negative consequences including social isolation, poor academic performance and later criminal behavior. Indeed nearly 60 percent of boys classified as bullies in grades six through nine were convicted of at least one crime by the age of 24.

Naturally, teachers, parents, and government agencies are alarmed about bullying. Teachers understand that they cannot ignore the potential for bullying to disrupt the classroom and undermine learning. What to do?

A board game with owls and trees on it.
Prevent Bullying with Cooperative Games

A go-to source for information is StopBullying.gov, the Federal Government’s main information outlet on the subject. According to StopBullying.gov, “the easiest way to address bullying is to stop it before it starts.†In other words, bullying prevention is the most efficient way to respond

to the problem. Of course, teachers, administrators, and even peers need training in how to respond to full-blown incidents of physical, verbal, and social bullying. However, the important point is that prevention matters as well, and is indeed the most efficient way to address the bullying crisis.

At StopBullying.gov, the section Prevent Bullying offers a handful of guidelines to stop bullying before it starts. Among them, it directs school personnel to “build a safe environment†by reinforcing “positive social interactions and inclusiveness.†You can surely see that positive social interactions and inclusiveness are indeed what cooperative games are all about! Using cooperative games to protect and  improve school climate is a sensible first line of defense against the meanness, aggression, domination, and exclusivity that lead to bullying. Especially when introduced early, these games have great promise.

The Cooperative Games Bullying Prevention Program 

The field of cooperative games is growing by leaps and bounds. The first time the term “cooperative game†appears in the literature is in a short pamphlet published in 1950 by Education professor and peace researcher Theo Lentz along with his co-author Ruth Cornelius, who was a first-grade teacher. Though this work was not well-circulated, the concept of cooperative games as an alternative to competitive games was first articulated by Lentz and Cornelius. It has seeped slowly through the culture and begun to bloom in diverse forms. Kinesiology professor and Olympic coach Terry Orlick pioneered the use of active cooperative games in the 1970’s through his many excellent books. Jim Deacove was the pioneer of cooperative board games, which he began to produce through his small company Family Pastimes in the 1970’s. He is still at it today!

Many cooperative game designers, inspired by these early pioneers, have followed over the past decade or so.

What has been lacking until now however is awareness of the strong pedagogical rationale for using cooperative games in education. This article seeks to address that gap. So thank you for reading it and please share if you agree that cooperative games are a pedagogical idea whose time has come! As this article hopefully indicates, there are many robust reasons that cooperative games should be used in education, not the least of which is that they can prevent bullying. It is time we educators discover and share the many benefits of playing together!

A board game with owls and trees on it.
Cooperative Games Bullying Prevention Teaching Manual

Further, if you are a teacher or parent responsible for the education of very young children, a resource for using cooperative games to prevent bullying is now available to you.  The Cooperative Games Bullying Prevention Program, published in 2015, gives you all the practical knowledge and tools necessary to use this approach. This is the first bullying prevention program based explicitly on cooperative games. The core games used in The Cooperative Games Bullying Prevention Program are the very games that were tested in the 1994 University of Nevada study on cooperative games and shown to work. Thus The Cooperative Games Bullying Prevention Program is a solid, research-based approach to preventing bullying with data to back it up. It is also easy to implement, inexpensive, and of course fun! To find out more or purchase the program visit CooperativeGames.com https://cooperativegames.com/.

A board game with owls and trees on it.
The Cooperative Games Bullying Prevention Program helps create a positive school climate. It includes four University-tested cooperative board games and a teaching manual with pedagogical discussion, research, and directions for over 50 active cooperative games

Finally, to make this all a bit more concrete, here is one of the research-tested, active cooperative games featured in The Cooperative Games Bullying Prevention Program. Give it a try and have some fun! And while your students wiggle and giggle without a care in the world, know that in fact you are bringing them this joyous opportunity because you indeed care so much about the world. Thank you. May the peaceful power of cooperative play be with you and yours!

 XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXXOOXXOXOXOXOXO

 Half a Heart  

Materials: Red construction paper or cardboard hearts, cut in half; make these yourself or use Valentine’s Day hearts

Time Estimate: 10 minutesA board game with owls and trees on it.

Number of Players: Any

Object of the Game: To find the friend with the missing half of one’s heart

Skills: Cooperation; Large motor skills; Communication; Math; Critical thinking

Game Category: Classroom game

To Play: In advance, prepare the hearts. You will need half as many hearts as you have children playing the game. On one half of each heart, write a number and on the other half, draw that number of circles (or use a different shape or picture besides circles if you like, for example, smiley faces.) Cut the hearts in half so one side has the number and the other half has the picture of the circles. Give each child half a heart. Ask the children to skip around the room while you play music. Now, stop the music. Ask each child to match his heart-half with its counterpart. After everyone has found their partner by matching numbers and shapes, have the children trade their halves for a different number. Start the music again, ask the kids to skip around, and find a new partner by making their half hearts whole.

 

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Cooperative Games in Education

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