Group Games for Children

Usually when children reach about seven years of age, they begin to participate in a form of peer group play that entails child-determined organization, rules, leadership, and boundaries.

How are the Group Kid Games being Played ?

Group games for children that require some physical dexterity include marbles, darts, ring toss, jackstraws, tiddlywinks, and pick-up sticks. All are good social games because two or more children are needed to play and enjoy them. Temporary defeat is an acceptable part of the games because otherwise the players could not continue to take turns, and each game would bog down. As children approach their teens, they want to engage in highly organized team play. At this time, most are better able to think of the good of the group and not merely their own desires. So it is that children "graduate" from their early unorganized, rough-and-tumble physical games to such rigidly organized sports activities as baseball, hockey, basket-ball, football, volleyball, soccer, and team swimming.

The young child plays group games with complete disregard of the rules. In fact, there is a constant "stretching" and rearrangement of the rules of a game to suit the whims or the lack of skill of most young players. With older children, however, disregarding the rules is frowned upon and even considered cheating. Of course, children differ broadly in the degree of their interest in group sports, and some who lack experience and practice in motor skills often become onlookers instead of active participants.

Learning through Group Games for Children

Children are usually most cooperative when engaged in satisfying group games. They can turn rivalries into make-believe play instead of open conflicts. Social learning takes place in relation to the resolution of conflicts as well as in cooperative play. While adult behavior, criticism, and suggestions serve as part of the basis for the learning of sociality in the young child, the subtleties of sharing, playing, or working together, tolerance of diverse personalities, and agreeable participation in group life come from a long period of early practice in which all kinds of social encounters and obstacles are met and resolved. No period offers more opportunities for practice in social living than the first ten years of life.

Children become increasingly able to take the perspective of other persons (pretend play) and interpret their actions in different situations (role-playing). They move gradually from being "loners" in their play to interacting with others in children group games.

Sociodramatic play is often carried on alone. In this play, children build a fantasy world for themselves and pretend to be other people or other things. In taking the part of another character, the child tries to speak, move, think, and perhaps even dress as he thinks the character does. Children learn about other people, things, and happenings during the course of this type of play. When they recreate a situation in their dramatic play, they seem to be paying closer attention to what they see than they would otherwise. Young children often have misconceptions which they reveal in the course of their dramatic play. Parents and teachers can then offer corrections that sharpen the children's observations and thinking.
 

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