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Cooperative Games Teach Cooperation. But What’s So Great About Cooperation?

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Hi Conscious Cooperators! Suzanne Lyons here, doing my bit to help usher in a new era of peace and sustainable common sense in these troubled times. CooperativeGames.com is my contribution, however humble, to the CHANGE that is coming and needs to come. I am a science educator by training, and a science textbook author. Pearson publishes my textbook, Conceptual Integrated Science, which is sold around the world. Yay but not enough. Education, I now see, is more urgent than cognitive expansion. We are the problem and we are the solution as far as the Earth and our own destiny on it goes. A board game with owls and trees on it.What the world needs now is love sweet love. But if we can’t quite get there, what we need AT LEAST is the ability to work together toward the common good. That’s called enlightened self-interest and it’s essentially cooperation. As President Eisenhower once said: “Though force can protect in an emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration, and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.†Let’s break it down. Why is cooperation so vital in life? What are its specific benefits? And why should we be learning how to cooperate through play with cooperative games?

Cooperation is essential because it helps solve problems. As we say, “two heads are better than oneâ€. Cooperation brings the skills and talents of multiple stake holders to bear on any given situation. Cooperation makes it more efficient to get work done too. Many jobs are so big that they can only be accomplished through group effort. As we say, “many hands make light workâ€.

Cooperation is essential because it promotes healthy relationships. When we cooperate, we share, and as we know “sharing is caringâ€.â€Â  Cooperating and sharing elicit emotions of appreciation, gratitude, and trust as we help one another. These positive emotions underlie social bonding and healthy relationships.

Cooperation is also important because it’s the foundation of equity. Cooperation, in the sense we are talking about here, involves decision-making based on mutual respect and participation. It’s different than obedience. It’s motivated by the desire to listen to one another, to be fair and get along. Cooperation is the means by which equitable social arrangements can be forged and maintained.

If cooperation is of great value, and if cooperative games can teach cooperation through the powerful medium of play, then surely cooperative games are a beneficial teaching tool for our times. Hmmm…competition reinforces the us-versus-them mindset yet cooperation brings about peace. Maybe it’s time to rethink the commonplace idea that competition is natural and necessary. Maybe it’s time to give cooperation-and cooperative play-a chance.

Cooperative Games Use the Power of Play to Teach

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A board game with owls and trees on it.
Teaching with Cooperative Games Instills Prosocial Skills

Play is a child’s workshop; it is through play that children learn how to be in the world. Much current scholarship documents the close link between play and learning. For children across cultures, learning is achieved through play.1 Hunter-gatherer children play field games that prepare them to hunt. North American children, on the other hand, play with toy cars, plastic tools, fake money, miniature kitchens and doll houses in preparation for their adult roles. Further, play isn’t unique to humans. Mammals in general learn the skills they will use as adults by playing when they are young. Little foxes playfully pounce to practice predation. Fawns run and kick their long legs to rehearse the survival skill of fleeing. Young ones everywhere need to play in order to learn the skills they will use in adulthood.

A teacher’s gratifying and important role is to nourish the inevitable learning process of youth, to channel it in ways that lead to healthy and happy lives. Since play is a chief mode by which children learn, it’s important for us educators to keep an eye on what kinds of play opportunities we offer kids in school. With a bit of consciousness and care, teachers can set children up to learn beneficial skills through play at recess and during academic class time too. We are remiss if we ignore the opportunity to foster positive skills through play, for the play yard and classroom can become breeding grounds for harmful habits and negative social behaviors when meanness and aggression are allowed to take hold.  

Play is normal, natural, and free. One of the basic attributes of play is that the outcome doesn’t matter. In the realm of play we escape the pressures of real life. We can take risks, experiment, goof around, relax, and try something new. On the other hand, games have structure and rules. For this reason, games are more tightly tied to the social context than other forms of play such as imaginative play. When a child plays a game, it’s inevitable that he will follow—and learn—a set of social rules, a code of conduct. The wise caregiver recognizes that children are learning the rules of social engagement during games no matter what. So we may as well pay attention to this and be sure the learning is what we want to impart. We don’t want to unconsciously foster games that reflect and reinforce negative cultural patterns. We do want to expose children to games that will allow them to learn how to be happy, healthy, and good to one another. Cooperative games do just this. 

Great Cooperative Game for Kids: The Yoga Garden Game

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A board game with owls and trees on it.
Yoga Garden Game, a cooperative board game that teaches yoga and getting along together at the same time

One of my top-selling cooperative games for kids is the delightful Yoga Garden Game, a cooperative board game for ages 4 and up. Parents and teachers: this game teaches yoga and cooperation, is beautiful to look at, and fun to play. Why not get in the game yourself and share the gentle joy of cooperative yoga with your kids?

Yoga Garden Game, A Great Cooperative Board Game for Kids

Players work together to move the bumblebee through the garden and plant all the flowers before night comes and it’s time for bed. The rules are quite easy to follow, and with a little practice kids can actually play it on their own: players roll a die to move the bee around the board. Depending on where the bee lands, players may plant flowers, perform a yoga pose as illustrated on the yoga cards, invent their own yoga pose….or they may land on a space that puts stars in the sky and brings on night fall.

A board game with owls and trees on it.Why I Recommend this Cooperative Board Game for Kids

I love several things about this gentle cooperative board game for kids-and for you parents and teachers (who will surely enjoy looking on if not actually playing the game):

* The art on the game board is so beautiful … it shows a garden, the sky, and has such a peaceful feeling that it makes me feel connected to nature just looking at it!

* It teaches yoga in a very accessible and fun way for kids as young as 4 years old. Yoga is great for kids, as studies now show. I appreciate that the rules remind children “Don’t forget to breathe†as they practice their poses. The yoga game cards have

A board game with owls and trees on it.
The illustrated yoga game cards teach children yoga poses. Young kids can look at the picture while an adult or older child reads the steps.

pictures of the poses as well as simple step-by-step directions anyone could follow. The game is produced by YogaKids, a mission driven company all about teaching yoga to kids.

They are sincere in their mission …and you can tell! http://www.yogakids.com/

* As a cooperative board game, kids have to work together to accomplish a common goal. No one loses and has their feelings hurt. This game works in just the opposite way compared to a competitive board game: Here, everyone wins because everyone has a good time trying to move the bumblebee around the board and plant flowers, learning yoga all the while. If the game goal is not achieved, and nighttime comes before the flowers are planted, no matter. The group can play again another day and see if they can meet the challenge. As all cooperative games show, winning is more fun when it is shared, and losing is much less disappointing when we are all in the same boat. In a cooperative game, we can practice winning or losing, having fun and learning together!

CooperativeGames.com Deal of the Day

This is one of my best selling cooperative board games at CooperativeGames.com.  My customers are all smiles about it. To share the joy, I’m offering a 10% discount on the game right now. Go to our Deal of the Day Page at CooperativeGames.com. To see more and purchase the Yoga Garden Game, click  http://shop.cooperativegames.com/dealoftheday.asp

To shop our entire selection of cooperative board games, games for young and old alike,  go to http://shop.cooperativegames.com/

Thanks and Enjoy!

A board game with owls and trees on it.
Kids learning yoga in the classroom with the Yoga Garden Game

A Brief History of Cooperative Games

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The cooperative games movement dates back to the 1960’s and 70’s. Early pioneers include:

Terry Orlick (Canadian professor of kinesiology; cooperative games inventor and researcher; Olympic coach; and personal performance expert)

Jim Deacove (owner of Family Pastimes games company and pioneering designer of cooperative board games)

Stewart Brand (author of The Whole Earth Catalog and Vietnam war veteran who invented “New Games”—games that emphasized playfulness and joy rather than winning)

Dale LeFevre (game inventor and author of several New Games books)

Pat Farrington (who was connected to the New Games movement but added the insight that trust and cooperation could be built into games so that her games were “not so much a way to compare our abilities but to celebrate them”)

Ken Kolsbun (previous owner of Animal Town, the first manufacturer of cooperative games in the United States and designer of the classic board game Save the Whales. )

CooperativeGames.com got its start in 2009 when Ken Kolsbun retired and Suzanne Lyons turned AnimalTown, aka Child and Nature, into the Internet’s first shop and resource center focused strictly on cooperative play.

Since the early 1970’s, and thanks to the effort and inspiration of the earliest innovators, cooperative games of all sorts (circle games, board games, PE games, ice breakers, educational games, etc.) have spread organically to homes, schools, camps, work places, churches, activist gatherings and other settings around the world syncing up in Europe with a long-standing tradition of “friend games.” Still, cooperative games have remained relatively unadvertised and have not been promoted or produced on a mass scale. This is a mixed blessing, but is perhaps a positive for the integrity of the field. They are a bottom-up rather than a top-down “reform”, evolving as more and more people creatively adapt the idea to their own uses.

As the need for greater cooperation at a societal level becomes clear, public awareness of cooperative gaming grows. The educational community is awakening to them since cooperative games are at the intersection of four major pedagogical trends:

• recognition of the value of play

• cooperative learning

• attention to school climate

• gamification of education for content learning

In addition, cooperative digital gaming is lately attracting the interest of academics and entrepreneurs who recognize that large-scale online cooperative gaming has applicability to sustainability and social justice issues. All factors are converging, and surely cooperative play is blossoming in exciting new ways.

For more on cooperative games, to purchase games, and find free ones, visit CooperativeGames.com.

Happy Playing!

Rethinking Youth Sports with Cooperative Games

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A board game with owls and trees on it.I enjoy reading the literature on cooperative games as do many people who come to my web shop CooperativeGames.com. I just read and now recommend  “Rethinking Youth Sports†by Ramsey and Rank, of the Georgia Parks and Recreation Department. PE teachers and camp counselors: this article on cooperative games is especially relevant to you!

The authors argue that youth sports promote aggression in kids. The reason, they say, is that kids learn a winner-take-all attitude by participating in sports and that fair play and sportsmanship are on the decline. They attribute this to general cultural influences as well as violent behavior among some high profile professional athletes in recent years. Sad if this is true, but in any case, Ramsey and Rank feel that cooperative games can do much to restore civil behavior and reduce aggression in kids’ sports. They provide the following examples of how individuals and organizations might enhance youth activities with cooperative games:

  1. Incorporate cooperative games as a key component of youth activities programs
  2. Work with local schools to provide support for physical education teachers, teachers, and playground leaders with cooperative games activities and strategies for implementation of cooperative games in the classroom. Do the same with daycare facilities.
  3. Establish a consortium or recreation provider agencies and focus on the positive aspects of youth sports, incorporating cooperative games as part of the process.
  4. Embody cooperative games into the “Benefits of Recreation” information provided by the National Recreation and Park Association, state park and recreation associations, and local park and recreation agencies.
  5. Sponsor a local workshop on “how-to” conduct cooperative games.
  6. Work with local youth sports organizations and share the values and benefits or cooperative games. Suggest strategies for implementing them as part of their regular youth sports programs.

Be sure to check the Fun and Free pages at CooperativeGames.com for free directions to cooperative games useful for PE classes. Also shop for books on cooperative games in our book section. Or, make up your own games! It’s easier than you may think.