Rolling the Dice

One area in which I have yet to blog is the realm of large-group games. As a Beaver leader, I’m always on the lookout for great games for kids to play in a big group.

We have 15 boys, ages five to seven, in our colony, and you just can’t play board games with that many kids, no matter how hard you try.

The kind of games we like best as Beaver leaders are the kind that get them moving, but don’t encourage chaos. Especially if it helps to reinforce whatever we’re learning about that week.

If you ask any active young person which games are their favourites, you’ll likely hear “tag” and “hide and seek” in the list, and for good reason. They both allow for plenty of running around, something that kids often get told not to do.

But a truly good group game is more than just running around. I can still remember a game we played in science class in elementary school that was a form of tag. It accompanied a lesson on the three stages of matter – solid liquid and gas.

When the teacher yelled “Solid”, we all had to link arms with whoever was near and stand still. When she yelled “Liquid” we all walked around normally. And when she yelled “Gas”, we all ran around like maniacs.

So you have the element of running around, which made the 16 boys in my class of 24 quite happy, and it also firmly ingrained the idea of these three states in my mind.

Recently, we played a game with our Beavers that comes from
Taiwan called “Hopping Sticks” – it probably has a Taiwanese name, but I don’t know it. It was a simple relay race – another popular game with groups – in which the Beavers hopped over sticks, then turned around, picked one up and hopped back.

You could make it harder by getting kids to hop on one foot, or hop backwards – or for a group of gymnasts – cartwheel or back flip over the sticks.

Relays are easy to make up on the spot, as are station-based games. Our Beavers actually really like stations. It’s easy for us to divide them up by Lodge group or Tail group and have them go around to do three different things.

The whole thing has got me thinking – why don’t kids play group games as much anymore?

I can remember playing hide and seek for hours, especially in the summer time, when there was less to do, and you could spend hours playing games outside with your friends. It was especially fun to play in the dark – flashlight hide and seek, we called it.

There was also the popular “backwards hide and seek” or “sardines”, in which one person would hide while everyone else counted, and then we would all try to find that one person.

Once you found the hider, you had to hide along with them, until there was only one person left looking. Depending on how many kids were playing and where the hiding spot was, it could get pretty squishy – and giggly.

So, I’m calling on youth group leaders and teachers to help me compile a list of really good outdoor games to play with kids, so that we can all start reviving the culture of playing outside together.

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