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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

Can Cooperative Games Teach Kindness?

February 8, 2016 by Suzanne Lyons


Cooperative Games Nurture Cooperation not Competition

Cooperative games are a relatively new kind of play—these are games based on cooperation rather than competition. In a cooperative game, no one is ever eliminated. Players bond with one another as they A board game with owls and trees on it.enjoy shared fun without worrying that others may be proven to be luckier or “better†than they are. While competitive games often produce psychological threat—especially in children—cooperative games invite us to relax and have fun without anxiety. There are cooperative games of all kinds for all ages and settings. They range from board games to circle games to PE games to online games and more. They are all based on the understanding that it can be just as much fun—well, actually more fun—to play with each other than against each other!

Social scientists tell us that competition is defined as an interaction between people such that a particular goal is sought by all, but only one individual or group can attain it. By contrast, cooperation is coordinated

A board game with owls and trees on it.
Cooperative games are based on shared fun and mutual goals

effort directed at attaining a goal everyone can achieve by working together. Which of these modes of social interaction is more likely to result in mutual appreciation, respect, helpfulness and kindness? Which is more likely to result in defensiveness, anger, resentment, and envy? As we know from everyday life, common sense, and an increasing body of research, cooperation produces pro-social behavior while competition is often a recipe for social discord, unhappiness, jealousy, and even aggression.

 

Max the Cat, a Game that Embodies Kindness and Caring 

Consider Max the Cat, the classic cooperative board game for children ages 4-7. This game demonstrates how cooperative play can enable players to enjoy one another in kind and gentle—yet still fun and challenging—ways.

 In Max the Cat, players adopt the little creatures—a bird, mouse, and chipmunk. The little creatures’ goal is to travel all the way around the board to return to their home tree. Meanwhile Max, a fluffy black Tom Cat, rests on the porch. Players roll the dice when it is their turn. If they roll green dots, the little creatures move toward the home tree. But if players roll black dots, Max advances on the board. If Max lands on the same square as a bird, mouse, or chipmunk, the little creature becomes Max’s lunch!

How can the humans work together to keep the little creatures safe? One way is to lure Max back to his porch with the catnip, milk, cheese and favorite food tokens. But tokens

A board game with owls and trees on it.
Max, a classic and exemplary cooperative game

are scarce and need to be used judiciously—and that takes teamwork. A theme of the game is that Max is a natural hunter and it’s not fitting to hurt him or hate him. Better to coexist with him by luring him back to the porch where he can be happy without causing harm to others. To make this happen, players must be smart and work together by practicing their pro-social skills including taking turns, sharing, respectfully listening, and protecting the little creatures at the same time they even take care of Max. It’s a game based on a heart-centered paradigm. A whole new world—which feels great for one and all!

 

Using Cooperative Games Intentionally to Promote Kindness

If you would like to find out lots more about cooperative games and how they can be used to promote kindness at home and in the classroom, please visit my website CooperativeGames.com at https://cooperativegames.com/

We offer many free resources including a free ebook called Cooperative Games: Antidote to Excess

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

Competition, as well as coloring pages and directions for active games. We offer a carefully selected variety of cooperative board games for sale and we offer cooperative games programs and workshops

too. If you are a teacher or parent interested in social and emotional learning, you can also learn about a research-based approach to prevent bullying with cooperative games. See The Cooperative Games Bullying Prevention Program at https://cooperativegames.com/  It’s true, we are stronger—and happier—together!

 

 

Wishing you lots of love and laughter,

Suzanne Lyons MA, MA

Founder CooperativeGames.com

 

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Cooperative games engender heart-based play. Powerful stuff!, games for social and emotional learning

The Cooperative Games Blog: The Green Team

October 8, 2015 by Suzanne Lyons


The Cooperation Chronicles Episode 1: The Green Team

People sometimes ask: Why play cooperative games? A board game with owls and trees on it.One answer is that cooperative games teach cooperation. But then, what’s so great about cooperation?

Today we’re launching a blog series called The Cooperation Chronicles to answer that question. Cooperation is a rather unsung virtue in the culture these days. Rather than peaceful and productive cooperation, we often glorify competition with its dramatic contests, winners and losers, ups and downs, and inherent adrenaline rush. Competition is telegenic; cooperation less so. So in this little blog series, The Cooperation Chronicles, we are going to profile true stories of human cooperation. These stories are meant to warm the heart and remind us all of the wonders of working and playing together.

A board game with owls and trees on it.Today’s Cooperation Chronicle profiles The Green Team, four middle-school girls in Coral Gables,Florida and the movement they started at their school to save energy. Their initiative was successful in the extreme with win-win effects all over the place for everyone.

Maddi Cowen, Larissa Weinstein, Nicole Matinez, and Melissa Quintana were alarmed about sea level rise in their region of Florida due to climate change. They wondered if there was anything they could do. The girls got serious about working with one another and with other people in their school and community toward a common goal. The Green Team, a school-based organization whose mission was to mitigate climate change by reducing energy consumption at the school level, was born.

Sea-level rise is a severe threat to Miami. As Maddi herself states, the economic losses projected to occur in Miami due to sea-level rise are greater than losses at any other coastal city in the world.

The Green Team started by going around from homeroom to homeroom gathering interested students to do small things to save energy such as turning off lights and computers when not in use. Soon, school officials were working with the kids and bigger steps were taken. A board game with owls and trees on it.Air conditioners got switched off in favor of opening doors, a recycling program was launched, and the school roof was even painted white. The school formed a collaboration with a local non-profit Dream In Green, which supplied resources and assistance for the school-wide energy-saving campaign. Again quoting Maddie, “We didn’t just do this ourselves. We built an entire network with faculty, administration, students and other members of the community…Going green is a win-win situation for everybody†Principal Libby Gonzales commented on the degree of community mindedness when she said “Not only are we making a change at the school level, but we are trying to make a change city-wide, nation-wide, world-wide.†To date, the Green Team initiative has saved over $50,000 for George Washington Carver Middle School in Coral Gables Florida by reducing resource consumption. More importantly, they have contributed to the overall global shift toward sustainability.

This is a story of climate change, but not just in the sense of mitigating global warming. It’s also a happy tale about climate change in the sense of changing school climate, for the Green Team project fostered a positive sense of community within the school, replacing fear, apathy, and separation with unity and mutual appreciation.

You can watch a free video of this story, called Dreaming In Green, at the Young Voices for the Planet website. Here is the link http://www.youngvoicesonclimatechange.com/movie_dreaming.php

oxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxxooxxA board game with owls and trees on it.

The Cooperative Games blog is the random musings of a cooperative games aficionado,
educator, and proponent of the cultural shift toward we not just me. I’m Suzanne Lyons, founder of CooperativeGames.com. Come on in, pull up a chair, and let’s chat!

oxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxooxxo

Teachers: Note that there is a free Dreaming In Green curriculum that you can use in conjunction with the video of this story. Check it out! Again go to:  http://www.youngvoicesonclimatechange.com/movie_dreaming.php  Also, I myself co-authored a climate-change teaching manual with Lynne Cherry, producer of the Young Voices for the Planet films and Juliana Texley PhD, current President of the NSTA. Our book is called Empowering Young Voices for the Planet, published in 2014 by Corwin Press. It’s full of win-win stories of kids working together to help the environment, as well as hands-on activities for your students that support those stories.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: cooperation, cooperative games, cooperative games for kids, cooperative play

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