Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium, Jessie Hubbell Bancroft [best books to read for knowledge txt] 📗

PURPOSE AND PLAN.—This book aims to be a practical guide for the player of games, whether child or adult, and for the teacher or leader of games. A wide variety of conditions have been considered, including schools, playgrounds, gymnasiums, boys' and girls' summer camps, adult house parties and country clubs, settlement work, children's parties, and the environment of indoors or out of doors, city or country, summer or winter, the seashore, the woodland, or the snow. The games have been collected from many countries and sources, with a view to securing novel and interesting as well as thoroughly tried and popular material, ranging from traditional to modern gymnasium and athletic games. An especial effort has been made to secure games for particular conditions. Among these may be mentioned very strenuous games for older boys or men; games for the schoolroom; games for large numbers; new gymnasium games such as Nine Court Basket Ball and Double Corner Ball; games which make use of natural material such as stones, pebbles, shells, trees, flowers, leaves, grasses, holes in the sand or earth, and diagrams drawn on the ground.

The description, classification, and arrangement of the games have been made with the steadfast purpose of putting them into the most workable form, easily understood, with suggestions for getting the most sport and playing value out of them, and with means of ready reference to any class of games for use under any of the conditions mentioned. The series of indexes which accomplish this last-mentioned purpose make it possible to classify the games in many different ways, sparing the reader the necessity for hunting through much unrelated material to find that suited to his conditions. The index for schools is essentially a graded course of study in games.

The ball games requiring team play have been described according to an analytic scheme not before used for the class of games given in the present volume, which makes it possible to locate at a glance information about the laying out of the ground, the number, assignment, and duties of players, the object of the game, rules and points of play, fouls, and score. The various kinds of balls are described with official specifications. Diagrams for all kinds of games have been supplied unsparingly, wherever it seemed possible to make clearer the understanding of a game by such means, and pictorial illustration has been used where diagrams were inadequate. The music for all singing games is given with full accompaniment. Suggestions for the teaching and conduct of games are given, with directions for floor formations. Means of counting out and choosing sides and players are described, and one section is devoted to forfeits.

Under each of the main divisions chosen—miscellaneous active games, quiet games, singing games, bean-bag games, and ball games—the material has been arranged in alphabetic order to facilitate ready reference, although a general alphabetic index is appended. In short, the book aims to bring together all related material and every available device for making it readily accessible and easily understood.

Original research SOURCES AND NATURE OF MATERIAL.—The material in this volume, aside from that accumulated through a long experience in the teaching and supervision of games, has been collected through (1) special original research, and (2) bibliographical research. The original research has been made among the foreign population of New York City, where practically the entire world is accessible, and in other sections of the United States. This has resulted in some entirely new games that the writer has not found elsewhere in print. From among these may be mentioned the Greek Pebble Chase, the Russian Hole Ball, the Scotch Keep Moving, the Danish Slipper Slap, and, from our own country, among others, Chickadee-dee from Long Island, and Hip from New Jersey. Entirely new ways of playing games previously recorded have been found, amounting not merely to a variation but to a wholly new form. Such is the method here given for playing Babylon, a form gathered from two different Scotch sources. Another example is the game of Wolf, for which additional features have been found that add greatly to its playing value, especially the rule whereby the wolf, when discovered by the sheep who are hunting for him, shall take a jump toward the sheep before his chase after them begins; or, should he discover them first, the requirement that they take three steps toward him before the chase begins. Such points add greatly to the sport of a game, and with the spoken formulas that accompany them form a rich find for both student and player.

One may not well refer to the original research without mention of the charm of the task itself. It has been one of the sunniest, happiest lines possible to follow, attended invariably with smiling faces and laughter on the part of old or young, native or foreign, the peasant people or those more sophisticated.