Power of Play: A Treasury of Games

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What are your favorite games to play? Do you love an evening of board games with friends or playing outside on a sunny afternoon? Maybe meeting new people with icebreaker games sparks your interest. Whatever you prefer, playing together is a powerful tool for individual and community well-being.

Though animals continue to play throughout their adult lives, people often underestimate the importance of play. It dramatically impacts our physical, emotional, and mental health, especially for kids. Play reduces stress, builds curiosity and creativity, and strengthens connections with friends and family.

Check out these ideas to have fun and build community through play. Whether you’re in the classroom or at a community event, these games are a great way to build bonds of friendship together.

 

Select each title below for more details. 

Wonders of Nature

Refresh your bodies and spirits by enjoying the outdoors together. Gather flowers and leaves on a walk with friends for a nature-inspired suncatcher. Turn berries, twigs, acorns, and stones into inspirational messages. Build a human obstacle course, and help your knowledge of nature grow in a fun game with friends.

 

Celebrating Our Human Family

Invite your neighbors and community members to strengthen connections with games to share your hopes and stories. Create an owl-inspired bird feeder to care for feathered friends, and make some tasty energy bites to share.

 

Follow-Up Fun

Create personalized poetry together, develop skits inspired by the letters of the alphabet, memorize an inspirational quote, and play a know-your-neighbor guessing game.

 

Get-to-Know-You Games

Discover what you can learn about friends and neighbors in an alphabet mixing game or a virtues guessing game. Put your construction skills to the test with a friendly balloon tower competition. And have a good laugh with a joke matching game.

 

Path of Friendship

Create a kindness jar to help spread warmth and care. Find common ground in an icebreaker game with friends and neighbors. Practice seeing the best in each other with a game of virtues. And conduct some “Good News Interviews” to learn about the people in your community.

 

Create a Haven

Put your collaboration and coordination skills to the test while juggling as a group. Spring into action with some creative problem-solving skits. Play a global guessing game to learn about the places your friends love, and celebrate unity in diversity with a colorful garden collage.

 

Celebrate Space

Explore questions about the universe with an “I Wonder” board. Take off on a space relay race. Test your skills in a planetary ring-toss game, and have a blast building homemade rocket launchers.

 

Celebrate Unity

Mingle with friends and neighbors in a “popcorn popping” game. Build cooperation skills to uplift the world together. Celebrate diversity with a mural of handprints, and piece individual art into a unified community quilt.

 

Privilege: An Unfair Game

Strengthen compassion with games that explore how privileges give an unfair advantage. Play a paper toss game with uneven starting lines. Run a race with a delayed start time. Make shapes without the proper tools. Try your hand at a one-armed water balloon toss.

 

Games for Change

Play games to change the world. Work together to reach the finish line with your arms and feet linked together. Build communication skills with partner art. Band together and collaborate on a hula hoop challenge, and get to know each other with a question toss game.

 

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Updated on 5.01.19