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Ten Reasons to Homeschool with Cooperative Games…And Ten Ways to Do It

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Have you ever played a cooperative game? Cooperative games are based on cooperation rather than competition. Players work together to win. Thus, winning becomes a shared experience rather than an individualistic one. When players win, it’s joy for everyone. If they lose, no one bears the disappointment alone or gets labeled the “loser.”

As a former public-school science teacher as well as a former homeschool parent, I have seen great value of cooperative games in teaching. Cooperative play makes learning fun. It also teaches valuable social skills including, of course, cooperation. Cooperation is important for students to learn because it is essential to success in personal relationships as well as in the workplace. In a broader sense, cooperation is important to teach because students will need cooperative skills and an appreciation of cooperation to maintain a just, peaceful, and democratic society.

Cooperative games come in all formats including circle games, board games, party games, active physical games, digital games and more. Games exist for students of all ages too. You can find directions for cooperative games on the internet (for example, I have many free games posted on my site CooperativeGames.com). There are wonderful cooperative games manuals as well. The classic Cooperative Games and Sports by Terry Orlick (1978) is full of fun and easy games to play with school-age children.

There are some particular reasons why cooperative games are well-suited to homeschooling. In this short article, I give you the top ten reasons gathered from my research. Also, I have listed my top ten favorite ways to use them in the homeschooling setting. Enjoy!

Top Ten Reasons to Use Cooperative Games in Homeschool Settings for Students of Any Age

  1. They can be used to teach specific subject area knowledge, including math, language arts, science, and the arts.
  2. They teach cooperative behavior (Orlick, 1978).
  3. They teach many social-emotional skills such as listening, encouraging others, and offering help (Goldstein, 1994).
  4. They prevent the emotional meltdowns associated with losing competitive games.
  5. They reduce aggression (Bay et al, 1994).
  6. There are cooperative games for students of all ages and abilities.
  7. They can teach problem-solving and other critical-thinking skills.
  8. They provide a break from excess competition.
  9. They foster dialogue, communication, and bonding between students or between teacher and student.
  10. They are fun!

Top Ten Ways to Implement Cooperative Games in Homeschooling Settings

  1. Have students play cooperative board games with educational themes. Pandemic, created by Matt Leacock, is one very timely example! The game I created with singer Raffi, called The Baby Beluga Game, teaches ocean science. The board game Auntie Ruth’s Apples from Family Pastimes is a fun board game for teaching math.
  2. Use physically active cooperative games and sports for physical education. (Refer to the Internet or books on cooperative games for active games. Consider Cooperative Volleyball, No-elimination Simon Says, and Blob Tag.)
  3. Engage students in the many classroom cooperative games that teach academic subjects. (Again, research books and websites for specific games. Examples include: Cooperative Storytelling and Cooperative Words and Pictures, which teach language arts. More examples can be found on CooperativeGames.com.)
  4. Provide cooperative games that are designed specifically for social-emotional learning. (Again, there are many of these you can easily discover. Partner Walk and Trust Fall are classics.)
  5. Gather homeschool students together for large-group cooperative games. Sports, social skills, and academic knowledge can all be learned through festive, cooperative games.
  6. Have students make their own cooperative games to play with one another. If the students are to make board games, you will need to provide materials. But active cooperative games need nothing but imagination, an experimental attitude, and an understanding of what cooperation involves.
  7. Change the rules of traditional competitive games to make them cooperative. For example, play Cooperative Musical Chairs—a classic.
  8. To formalize learning, be sure to involve students in reflection after gameplay. For example, pose questions such as: “How did it feel to cooperate rather than compete while playing a game?”; “Why is cooperation important?”; “Could you change the rules of this game to make it more fun next time?”, etc.
  9. Start the school day with a quick cooperative game as a welcoming practice, to invite the student into a participatory and nurturing version of schooling.
  10. Parents, Teachers, and Parent-Teachers: Play with your students! In cooperative games, players help one another. Thus, it is very natural for you as the teacher to discuss ideas with students, teach bits of academic knowledge, and coach critical thinking and social skills in the course of a cooperative game. This is teaching through play and intimate encouragement. It is a win-win for students and teachers alike.

References

Bay-Hinitz, A.K., Peterson, R.F., & Quiltch. (1994). Cooperative Games: A Way to Modify Aggressive and Cooperative Behaviors in Young Children. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 27(3), 435-446. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1994.27-435

Goldstein, A.P. (2002). The Psychology of Group Aggression. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Orlick, T. D. (1981). Positive socialization via cooperative games. Developmental Psychology, 17(4), 426–429. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.17.4.426

The Baby Beluga Game Wins Dr. Toy Awards

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Suzanne Lyons, 800-328-1050, [email protected]

The Baby Beluga Game Wins Dr. Toy Awards:
Ten Best Educational Products and Best Picks for Children’s Products 2018

Nevada City, CA (November 25, 2018) – The Baby Beluga Game, a new board game from CooperativeGames.com, has been honored with the Dr. Toy Ten Best Educational Products Award and the Best Picks for Children’s Products Award-2018.

A board game with owls and trees on it.

The Dr. Toy Award Program was developed by noted play and child development authority, Stevanne Auerbach, PhD, (a.k.a. Dr. Toy) in 1992 as a service to consumers who desire safe, affordable, educationally oriented, stimulating toys and play products for children. The program began in 1992 by Dr. Toy in cooperation with the national publication, Early Childhood News. So what is The Baby Beluga Game and why did it win these prestigious Dr. Toy awards?

A board game with owls and trees on it.

The Baby Beluga Game is a new cooperative board game for children ages 3-10. It presents players with a challenge: Can Baby Beluga and his Friends complete the Arctic journey to swim wild and free? To win, players must work together, use their smarts—and their hearts. The game features three levels of play for readers and non-readers alike. Designed to be used by families and friends and in the classroom too. Green, fair-trade, and made in the USA by a small, independent company, CooperativeGames.com.

Famed children’s entertainer Raffi teamed up with Suzanne Lyons, educator and founder of CooperativeGames.com, to produce the game. Lyons specializes in science as well as social-emotional learning, which comes through in the final product. Explains Lyons: “I wanted to create a game that supports the loving, pro-social nature of children. Cooperative games show it’s natural to work and play together and enjoy one another. Whales, like Baby Beluga, are intelligent animals with happy social lives based on cooperation. Learning about whales is a great way to learn science and social skills at the same time.â€

A board game with owls and trees on it.

Besides teaching social skills and science, the game fosters music, art and imaginative play, too. Music gets in the act via a free download of Raffi singing “Baby Belugaâ€. The extraordinary design and illustration stimulate visual art appreciation. The box interior, as well as the 32-page game guidebook, game board, and wooden game tokens feature original paintings by artist Ashley Wolff, who illustrated the classic Baby Beluga children’s book. The box design is innovative, beautiful and functional—tray and lid snap together to make an illustrated diorama useful for optional creative free play.

Three levels of play means that the youngest players can engage with very simple strategy and science ideas while older players can partake of more complex strategy and Earth science content. Truly, The Baby Beluga Game is positively packed with play and educational value—which is why it has earned the two celebrated Dr. Toy Awards.

What does Raffi think, 38 years after he first introduced the now-famous little whale? “I feel like a proud papa,†he admitted. “A lot of care went into developing this game.â€

The Baby Beluga Game is available now for holiday gift giving in the United States and Canada. To find out more details and order a copy go to the game website: BabyBelugaGame.com

Benefits of Cooperative Games for Young Children

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A board game with owls and trees on it.

  1. Cooperative Games reduce aggression in young children. See the study “Cooperative Games in Young Children: A Way to Modify Aggression†by April Bay Hinitz et al; 1994; University of Nevada, Reno.
  2. Cooperative Games increase pro-social skills including sharing and kindness. See studies by Terry Orlick and others.
  3. Though cooperative games have not been studied extensively, as they are not widely known about, they are both a form of cooperative learning and of course a form of play. There’s an enormous amount of scholarship and research documenting the benefits of both cooperative learning (see for example the brothers Johnson at the University of Minnesota) and the benefits of play (see for example the work of Peter Gray or Stuart Brown.) Benefits of cooperative learning include increased mastery of content and reduced classroom management and discipline problems while play is known to be essential for mental health and intellectual development. Cooperative play has all of the benefits of cooperative learning as well as play, since it is a form of both!
  4. Cooperative games have been shown to be useful in therapy situations to enhance communication skills of autistic and socially withdrawn children.
  5. Cooperative games are inclusive so they promote a “sense of belongingâ€. The importance of a sense of belonging in academic achievement has been documented by Jeffrey Cohen at Stanford and others.
  6. Cooperative games are fun as documented by Terry Orlick and others. Fun and happiness are beginning to be appreciated as important in their own right on humanitarian grounds. Consider for example the UN declaration on the right of children to play. Also positive psychology is beginning to document the value of happiness in human health.
  7. Cooperative games build empathy because the underlying ethic is mutual care and concern as opposed to the dog-eat-dog, “nice guys finish last†ethos that characterizes hypercompetitive society.
  8. Cooperative games help develop problem-solving skills.
  9. Cooperative play gives children practice working together which prepares them for cooperative learning and collaborative learning teaching strategies.
  10. Cooperative games provide a break from excess competition. (As documented in No Contest, The Case Against Competition, competition has many downsides including that it increases anxiety in children and reduces equity. Yet most schooling is competitively structured. For this reason it is important to give children a break from the destructive effects of excess competition.)
  11. Cooperative games can promote group cohesion and group identity.
  12. They are inclusive so no one wastes valuable class time sitting idly on the sidelines.
  13. Many cooperative games are physically active games so they help children stay physically fit.
  14. They allow kids practice taking turns and being courteous, which is a valuable life skill.
  15. They prepare kids for working life where team-playing is the norm.
  16. They prevent emotional meltdowns/embarrassment/meanness that commonly occur in competitive situations.
  17. Cooperative games build healthy relationships because they allow children to interact respectfully with one another and enjoy one another’s company.
  18. When adults give children cooperative play opportunities, they communicate to children that cooperation is a valued social norm. Thus cooperative games help build a positive social climate, which feels safe and enjoyable for children.
  19. Cooperative games open the heart because they activate mutual appreciation, and feelings of love and kindness. Thus they are a form of holistic learning (which can be summarized as learning that involves hand, heart, and mind.)
  20. Because children learn through play, children learn to cooperate through cooperative play. Cooperation is an essential social and emotional skill with a thousand benefits including that it is necessary for social relationships, success in the workplace, and for peaceful living in the larger society.
  21. Cooperative games teach kindness and fairness and demonstrate the increased productivity that comes from working with one’s fellow humans. Thus they model the kind of social interaction that is needed in the 21st century global community with its many intertwined social and environmental challenges. Thus, playing cooperative games help children become the kinds of citizens who can create and enjoy a sustainable and equitable society. In other words, cooperative games help build a better world, and this is their ultimate benefit for everyone—children and grown-ups alike.

Cooperative Play for Every School Day

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Cooperative games can be used to teach all school subjects. There’s a good chance you have heard about cooperative games used in PE classes.  For example, Waldorf movement classes center on active cooperative games. And Play Works, the popular provider of recess-based play programs to urban public schools,  use cooperative PE games too. As Waldorf and Play Works show, athletic cooperative games combine play with sports and social-emotional learning to make PE fun, inclusive, and successful for everyone.

But did you know that cooperative games are not just for the playground, they can be used inside the classroom too? Cooperative games have many social-emotional learning (SEL) benefits and they make great sense from a pedagogical standpoint. Think of it this way: cooperative games combine the pedagogical advantages of cooperative learning with the merits of play-based learning.

Cooperative Learning + Play-Based Learning = Cooperative Games

This is a powerful combo! Teachers already rely on cooperative learning and play-based learning because we all know how essential these approaches are. With all of their advantages, why not combine cooperative learning with play-based learning for an even more powerfully positive teaching tool?

So teachers, child-care providers, and home-schooling parents: When you’re planning lessons, consider adding cooperative games to your SEL curricula as well as your subject area teaching—for language arts, math, science or just about any other subject.

Here is a cooperative game for the classroom that can be adapted to different subject areas and age levels. The version below is for Kindergarten-level math. It will get you started:

A board game with owls and trees on it.
A Cooperative Math Game

Where can you get more cooperative games suited to classroom learning? Check my website CooperativeGames.com which has loads of resources for teachers including instructions for free cooperative games that can be used to teach various subject areas. I also offer a variety of cooperative board games, books, and services for educators for purchase. For example:

* The Baby Beluga Game This is a cooperative board game for kids ages 3-10, made in the USA from sustainable materials. I designed and published it through my small company Child and Nature. The Baby Beluga Game teaches STEM along with SEL and was created in collaboration with Raffi. https://shop.cooperativegames.com/BabyBelugaGame_p/101.htm

* The Cooperative Games Classroom Kit  The kit consists of my book, The Cooperative Games Bullying Prevention Program, plus The Baby Beluga Game and four fabulous research-tested Family Pastimes games including Max and Harvest Time. The Classroom Kit is a great starter kit for using cooperative games in Pre-K to Grade 2+ classroom. It provides classroom tips, directions to active games, research as well as cooperative board games kids will love. https://cooperativegames.com/classroom-kit/

* Professional Development When you are ready to dive deeper and become an expert in using cooperative play in your school, schedule a webinar or workshop with me for professional development As a former classroom teacher, I specialize in practical tips and teaching strategies, sound resources, sharing the latest research—plus sharing joyful inspiration and encouragement. Workshops are fun, important, and very well-received. https://cooperativegames.com/professional-development-for-teachers/

Let’s Play Together! Good Luck and Have Fun- 

https://cooperativegames.com/

A board game with owls and trees on it.

Meet The Baby Beluga Game

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Baby Beluga in the deep blue sea, swim so wild and swim so free…A board game with owls and trees on it.

 Will Baby Beluga be able to make the journey? In this new cooperative board game for children ages 3-10, Baby Beluga and his Friends have a common goal: to swim so wild and swim so free, together of course! But there could be trouble along the way. To get Baby Beluga and his friends to the Wild and Free Zone, players work together using their hearts and their smarts. Players move the wooden figures of Baby Beluga and his Friends along the lavishly illustrated game board, which shows the Arctic environment in all its natural beauty. Through play, children learn the joys of working together as well as some fun and fascinating environmental science.

Suitable for homes, classrooms, and any setting where children gather to have fun, avoid screens, exercise their imaginations, and explore the natural world.

The Baby Beluga Game takes about 15 minutes to play. It’s suitable for 1-8 players. There are three levels of play, with the easy version accessible to children as young as 3. The most challenging and educational version is exciting for children ages 10+. Teachers, note that The Baby Beluga Game teaches both STEM and SEL!

This cooperative board game for kids was created with the loving support and input of Raffi, famed children’s entertainer and songwriter of Baby Beluga. It was designed by Suzanne Lyons, a teacher and founder of Cooperative Games.com as well as owner of the independent publishing company Child and Nature. The original watercolor artwork was created by Ashley Wolff, talented illustrator of the classic Baby Beluga children’s book. It was manufactured in California, USA from sustainable materials and exceeds child safety requirements. A board game with owls and trees on it.

To purchase in the United States, please visit CooperativeGames.com  https://cooperativegames.com/

Canadian customers, please purchase The Baby Beluga Game through Amazon.ca at  https://www.amazon.ca/Child-and-Nature-BabyBeluga/dp/B07BKR72KD/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1533166065&sr=8-1&keywords=baby+beluga+game