tips for play games

Top tips on playing games with groups A very serious multiple choice quiz to play before we begin. 1 It’s five minutes before your meeting starts. a) You frantically peruse the 1930s Party Games For All book your Great Aunt Doris gave you, in search of something to do to with the group when they arrive. b) You have spent the week carefully selecting themed activities from your wide range of books, websites and network of equally dedicated friends. You’ve finished setting up the room for the first game, briefing the rest of the team and now spend a moment in contemplative prayer. 2 You have a good ball game to play a) You disappear for ten minutes into the cupboard in search of the ball while the group wreak havoc with the hall furnishings, develop three bouts of gang warfare and the other leaders retire prudently to the toilets to hold a prayer meeting. b) You produce a beautiful new soft foam ball just the right size for those in the group with poor motor skills and impress upon the group the need to take care of other people’s property, both the ball and the hall. 3 The group is ready to play a) You shout the explanation of how to play the game above the din of conversation and blipping of mobiles, bellow that no, you’re not going to repeat it for those who weren’t listening, moan about the manners of young people today, toss the ball into the throng with a shrug and go into the kitchen for a quick coffee. b) You demonstrate the game using the chattiest group member so that they are fully occupied and everyone can listen, you also remind everyone of the signal to be quiet, should the need arise and put a leader on each team. 4 You begin the game. There is a fracas a) You wonder how Child Protection rules apply to GBH inflicted on adults, and wade in clutching your hot coffee to break it up, shouting for quiet and George please put Jenny down before she gets hurt and who’s got the ball? I said, you horrible bunch of urchins / house group members / churchwardens who’s stolen the ball? b) You use your signal for quiet, use your team to deal with the different small problems that have arisen and as quickly as possible start the game again or change to your reserve option game with a smile that changes the mood to cheery optimism. 5 One team has won. One has lost a) You cheer the winning team and dish out kingsize Mars Bars, telling the losers to stop whining – they should have tried harder / been taller / not spent all their time talking / not been a bunch of losers in the first place. b) You comment on how well particular people in both teams played, mention the way certain people were particularly kind, encouraging or generous and give everyone a point for joining in so well. 6 The game is over a) You thumb through Party Games for All for something else to pass the time before the end of the session and decide to open the tuck shop early. b) You cunningly draw out the link with today’s theme, refer to the different feelings evoked during the game and relate them to the Bible passage and to modern situations and swiftly move on to the next activity, beaming at everyone and sweeping them along in a calm outpouring of grace. Mostly a’s? The article that follows might be an interesting and fruitful read for you. Mostly b’s? You are obviously about to be canonised and have only dropped into this website to make us feel better. Only read this article if you are bored with polishing your halo. Playing games! This article is for those of us who do enjoy including the playing of games in the context of learning but may secretly feel a little guilty about it. Is it really just a waste of time? Just a way of the group (shock horror) having fun? A little leaven in the lump of the series on Leviticus you should be studying? Actually no, of course not. If you want justification for using games, there is ample. Playing a game communicates so much, so happily: it says wordlessly, ‘You’re here to enjoy yourselves as well as to learn’. It cements the group into a cooperative whole – very important for a group who perhaps only see each other once a week. It puts the focus onto something external (the object of the game) when individuals may be feeling self-conscious: in other words, it helps those who are shy to forget about themselves and concentrate on the matter in hand. A game claims the space: ‘Make a circle / sit in two rows opposite each other / find a space’ are all ways of feeling at home in this echoing space you’ve just entered. And carefully selected games, of course, are a valuable common ground of experience for tapping into later in the more overt teaching of the session. ‘How did it feel when Reginald stole all the counters?’ ‘You know the moment when Chloe sat on your head…?’ A game can be an excuse to build up relationships: to get the group looking at each other, touching each other, talking together or moving together. Yikes – your attitude to the group is being demonstrated too. Are they perceiving you as a tyrannical monster, a spineless wimp or a totally cool dude? And you will be assessing them: do they need calming down or waking up? Are the forceful personalities on your side or out to make trouble? Who is friends with whom this week? Who needs a bit of extra tlc? Who isn’t him/herself today? A game can be a group barometer. Sometimes too, a game can be purely a way to release energy, to reset an atmosphere, to serve as a transition from one activity to another. All in all a very useful tool indeed. Of course things go wrong. So much of your energy goes into organising a game that there’s none left for the ‘meat’ of the session. Or all your good intentions disintegrate when the game simply doesn’t work. Horrors: I had a dream last night in which I was trying to arrange a game of Musical Chairs and no-one followed the rules. It was chaos! The old ladies were the most vicious. Perhaps the Lord is trying to tell me never to risk party games with the over 80s. Choosing an appropriate game for your particular group is a skill in itself. The game can be not just the way in to the session, but the ‘lesson’ itself. Lesley Pinchbeck, in the introduction to Theme Games (Scripture Union) writes: ‘Games become learning experiences when children discover things for themselves in a real and tangible way.’ When people learn without being told, deep down learning has taken place. Another issue for some of us when playing games with groups, is that of control, or loss of it. A room full of boisterous players screeching at the top of their voices, stampeding over the smaller members and damaging both themselves and the fabric of the room is not a scenario that tempts anyone to indulge in game-playing. So it’s worth having a look at the issues of choosing suitable games, crowd control, safety, relationships and competitiveness. Choosing a suitable game in the first place, as we have said, is crucial and can pre-empt many problems. Does it either link with your theme or is so enjoyable that it’s worth it for its own sake? Will it work with the number, age or mix of group members you have? How much mess will it make? How much equipment does it need? How long will it take to play? Is it competitive? (See below) Will it build up your group or knock relationships down? How can you use it to help illustrate the point you want to make? Knowing your group as you do, are there any caveats you want to include in the way you set up the game? (In a game at a children’s session I was in once, the group was asked to list things they like and things they hate. A bit of thought about that particular group would have indicated that some of the girls would use this as an opportunity to be unpleasant about one particular girl in their class. Which they did. It resulted in a very uncomfortable situation. A pre-emptive strike would have meant an invitation to name things they hate ‘like vegetables or spiders – but of course we don’t include any names of actual people, as that wouldn’t be kind, would it?.’) Of course, a handy supply of games books is a great help as you look for just the right game for your group. What should you look out for amongst the array of books of games? There’s a list of recommended books at the end of this article, but a browse through our website or a good Christian bookshop is a must to keep up with the new books that come out. If you’re looking for games to use primarily in a church context, make sure the book has a corkingly detailed index, ideally of themes and of Bible references. Otherwise, even if you mark the page of a brilliant game as you glance through it on the way home from the bookshop, you will never find it again three months later in that Saturday night panic of finding teaching material on hideous skin diseases. Look for a book which gives you brief notes as to how you might link the game in with your session too. And check there are plenty of games that don’t require much equipment. Speaking personally, my gaze flicks without pausing over the games that require jelly, water or eggs, and audible screams are heard if a game demands porridge. Talking of audibility, one problem with the fun of games is that of volume. A roomful of enthusiastically participating people can make it impossible to be heard. It’s worth taking a leaf out of the Brownie book and instituting a non-verbal signal to indicate that everyone should stop what they’re doing and listen. A hand up in the air for example, or a whistle or bell: anything that doesn’t involve you flapping your hands ineffectually in the midst of chaos, bleating, ‘Could you please be…. Um, would you mind just…? Hello! Can anybody hear me?’ This is of course related to the issue of safety when playing games. If something starts to go wrong in the middle of a game, how will you stop the proceedings in order to prevent a disaster? If your group is a mixed age one, how are you going to play games so that the older larger members don’t mow down the younger smaller ones? Can you play several rounds so that each round only includes those over the age of… Or just girls or just those with birthdays between January and July or just those who are shorter than…? Can you realistically (and safely) handicap the bigger ones – blindfold them? Tie their knees together? Let them use only one arm? Set a time limit? Make them run further? Or can you start giving special responsibilities to older children, making them directly responsible for a particular younger one in a ‘buddy’ system? The careful choice of game will help solve or create your problems. How you play the game you have chosen is crucial. If you agree with Kathryn Copsey From the Ground Up that relationship is at the root of all that we do, how will you use the game to build up your relationship with the group and their relationships with each other? Do the team leaders stay safely on the sidelines gossiping or do they join in the game wholeheartedly? Has everyone got their eyes peeled for the hurting group members who are opting out? Is this a chance to come alongside a particular person to help them? Competitiveness is worth considering: do you want to encourage it or not? It is a feature of the Kids Club approach, pitting girls against boys, team against team. It creates instant bonding between members of a team, and it gives easy-to-perceive short term attainable goals. It gives a hefty buzz to the winning team and an instant satisfying ‘high’. It’s a way of saying to the losers, ‘Hey, toughen up: life’s like that.’ If I can generalise for a moment, it pleases many boys, who are by nature more competitive than girls. (Though see my comments about me later.) It is also a useful control tool as you are in charge of awarding points or prizes to the most pleasing teams: a very manipulative tool indeed. Of course, prizes don’t have to enter into it. At the Zoom! events in Birmingham, the enthusiastic activity leaders who had divided the children into teams, would yell periodically, ‘And what do points mean?’ to which the answer came back equally enthusiastically, ‘Nothing!’ Setting up a reward system can be very useful to manage behaviour, whether that’s the old school trick of a marble in a jar for every good point scored and a group reward if the jar is filled, or direct prizes to individual children. Personally I feel very uncomfortable about the latter: I can never work out and stick to a perceptibly fair rewards scheme (‘When Sidney sat down quietly, he got a sweet. Why didn’t I?’). For every winner, there are so many more children who lose. As someone who still hates losing, (competitive? moi?) a winner / loser system introduces unbelievable levels of anxiety. It’s no good saying ‘It’s just a game!’ because at that particular moment, the game is the be-all and end-all and it really does matter. (Otherwise, why are we bothering to play at all?) And don’t talk to me about consolation prizes! (‘Not only have you FAILED, we also don’t think you are mature enough to COPE with your failure, so have a sweetie and everything will be all right.’) If you want to give everyone a prize, the only way is to present the sweets / stickers / scooters / digital cameras / holidays in Florida sincerely as a prize for all those who took part. Which is genuinely what matters, isn’t it? A well-balanced, loving, trusting and generous group will love to see the other team win. But how many of us are at that stage with every single member? Or indeed any member? Watch your group carefully next time you play a competitive game with or without a prize and make a note of all the different reactions to winning and losing. Ruth Wills claims that competitive team games can result in ‘one set of abusive, resentful and hurting children.’ (Foreword to Everyone’s a Winner Scripture Union). I know a person with Asperger’s Syndrome, for whom losing is a major disappointment and cause of trauma. When I have him in the group, I would prefer to avoid games that reinforce the ‘I win, you lose’ attitude. I have seen a whole happy morning of activities at a local church destroyed for him as his group didn’t end up in winning position. I wonder how many people, more reticent about wailing and weeping than he is, are nonetheless damaged by losing yet again. You could argue that this is a life skill they need to learn and I would agree, but it’s not the most important thing a church can teach them. People have plenty of opportunity to lose and fail outside church – why not take the time and effort to find games that everyone can enjoy and succeed at when they’re in a church setting? Surely that is a more accurate reflection of God’s way of working with us – building us up rather than knocking us down? And surely, when all’s said and done, we’re playing games because first and foremost, we want everyone to have fun. Ruth Wills has a whole bookful of excellent suggestions for games that affirm the players, build up the group and are still fun. Yet competitive games do add intrinsic purpose and can be used to focus and reward a group or individual. There is a time and place for them. And perhaps a way of using them constructively might be to play two or three short competitive games in a session and mixing the group into new teams for each game, thus ensuring that everyone has equal opportunity to be on the winning or losing side. Even my stress levels might subside then. You may have noticed that throughout this article I have avoided assuming that playing games is just for children. As actors, therapists, cell churches and the Barnabas Team know, games are an important way of learning for all ages. In our training sessions in schools and churches, we often ask people to tap into their creativity and the best way we’ve found to break down the barriers that inhibit them from doing so is through a game of some sort. Martyn in particular has a wide range of games to relax the most hostile of groups. Adults have so many barriers to learning: self-consciousness, competitiveness with their peers (oh yes, even vicars and teachers), physical stiffness, mental rigidity, a sense of dignity, a weariness that makes any chair seem unleavable… games threaten much of this. Better that the reluctance to run risks should be vented on a game than on the subject of learning: in the toughest nut situations, the game serves as a buffer as much as anything. But how interesting that the synonyms for ‘playfulness’ in the thesaurus are such happy words: playful, frisky, frolicsome, gamesome; jocose, jocular, waggish; laughter-loving; mirthful, rollicking… I would rather be with a group who were like that (ok, perhaps not the frisky ones) than those representing the column opposite playfulness, where all these cheerful words have changed to dejection: cheerless, joyless, spiritless, melancholy, sombre, dark, gloomy, heavy-hearted…. Playfulness is essentially a mark of a healthy spirituality, while an unwillingness to play can indicate spiritual damage or lack of trust. Perhaps, then, we should be playing games in all seriousness to gauge the spiritual health of our group, whether it is a group of adults or children. And if there is a marked lack of playfulness, maybe the way back to spiritual health and creativity could be found in part through games. For a free taster, try this game from Barnabas’ brand new 100 Bible Games by Julia Abrahams Nursery Rhymes Setting: Indoors or outdoors Number of players: Up to 12. Divide larger numbers into smaller groups. Time: 10-30 minutes. Preparation: Blindfolds, string and masking tape or scarves are required. Age: 8 years and above. Bible verse: “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you.” Romans 15:7. This game offers players the opportunity to explore new and inclusive ways of thinking. It gives them experience in accepting and accommodating the differences of other players. This game may also be used as a springboard to discussion on the various forms of acceptance and the ways in which Jesus accepts us as we are. To begin this game, divide the players into teams of roughly equal numbers. Ask each team to sit in a circle. Then, instruct them that three players in each team must adopt disabilities. The first player will be unable to walk, and must tie up his or her legs with string. The second player will be unable to see, and must wear a blindfold. The third player will be unable to talk, and must cover his or her mouth with masking tape or a scarf. Tell the players that they are going to participate in a contest, in which each team must perform a well known nursery rhyme, such as ‘Humpty Dumpty’. Instruct the players that points will be awarded for creativity (such as singing, dancing and movement), and the inclusion of all players in the performance. No player with a disability is permitted to discard their disability during the performance. The members of each team must assist one another to ensure that the performance is completed smoothly and effectively. After the game, discuss with the players the meaning of accepting one another’s weaknesses. The discussion may operate on an individual level, such as how we should deal with those who are different, or on a societal level, such as how we should treat those who are less advantaged than we are. For books with games and often much more, check out the Ideas section of our website and also these Barnabas books: 100 Bible Games Champions! Jungle Jamboree Step into the Story Across the World Stay Cool in School Colours of Easter The Lord's Prayer Unplugged Not Sunday, Not School! (pub May 2006) Plus: Theme Games and Theme Games 2 Lesley Pinchbeck (Scripture Union) Everyone’s a winner! Ruth Wills (Scripture Union) 100 Children’s Club Activities Jan Dyer (Kingsway) Red Hot Icebreakers Michael Puffett and Sheldon W. Rottler (Monarch) Games for Actors and Non-actors Augusto Boal (Routledge) Theatre Games Clive Barker (Methuen) 100+ Ideas for Drama Anna Scher and Charles Verrall (Heinemann)