Om Amriteshwarayai Namah GAMES FOR CHILDREN Some games that we have tried out are 1.

The boat race The children are divided in two groups. And they compete with each other in a race. They sit with their legs crossed over the waist of the person in front of them, while sitting down. A finish line is marked, and at the start whistle the teams try to move forward without breaking the team. Any team which breaks up has to stop until the rejoins again. The team finishing the crossing line first wins. 2. Tableaux The children are divided into groups. Each group is given a topic or a scene from the Puranas. They can discuss how they are going to depict the subject as a still scene. They can any props available in the room or around. At the end of the discussion time, each team comes up one by one, and is given 2 minutes to set up the scene. The leader then explains the scene. The judges can ask questions. The team with the best depiction and description wins. 3. A variation on the above game is Be a Reporter. Here the team leader becomes a TV reporter, and he gives an account of the scene that the others will have to depict. He may ask questions to those involved also to give a feel of reportage. 4. Passing the balloon - A variation of passing the parcel. The team members sit in a circle and try to pass a balloon around they have to pass it around using their feet. The balloon on their feet has to be transferred to the next persons feet. If it falls down, he has to enact some chore.

5. Team balloon passing Two teams face each other. The balloon is passed in the same manner as the above game. The faster team wins. 6. Catch the dragons tail the children are divided into two or more teams. Each team lines up with each child holding the waist of the person ahead. The first person in the line is the head of the dragon and the last person is the tail. The tail has a handkerchief hanging from the back. The head of the dragon must try to catch the tail of the other dragon without breaking the body. Whichever dragon can do it is the winner. 7. Human Props - the children are divided into teams. A name of an object (for children it may be something like Lotus flower, motorcycle, octopus, Butterfly, centipede etc) and the entire group as a whole has to depict that one object. The team is given 30 seconds to become that object. Each team member must become some part of the object. All the teams do it together, and the best team is judged after every round. 8. The children sit in a circle. The first person starts counting from 1, then the next person2.. And so on.. But if anybodys number is 3 or its multiple, he cannot say the number, but only MA. Similarly, if anybodys number is 5 or its multiple he can only say OM, and so on.. So a typical round will go like this 1..2..MA..4..OM..MA.78MAOM..11..MA1314MAOM16..17 and so on. Anybody making a mistake is out. We play till there is one person remaining. 9. Break the balloons Its relay race. There are two teams. One member from each team runs to a chair 10 mtr away, then he has

to take a balloon from a bag there and try to break it by sitting on it. He can return only after he has broken the balloon. Only when he has returned back, the next person can run and do the same. This continues till each person in the team has burst a balloon by sitting on it. The faster team wins. 10. Act out a scene from the Puranas they get 60 seconds first, then 30 seconds, then 10 seconds and then just 5 seconds! 11. Rope Jump The teams have to jump together with two team members at the ends holding the rope. The team making the highest number of jumps wins. 12. 15 questions Each team leader is given a name of a Puranic character. The other team members have to guess the character by asking a maximum of 15 questions. The leader can only answer to each question with a YES or a NO. The sequence for HANUMAN .. questions may go like this 1. Is it related to the epics? YES 2. Is it a male? YES 3. Was he fighting in the war? YES 4. Was he on Ravanas side? NO 5. Was he Lakshmana? NO 6. Was he Hanuman? YES!! And so on..