Games for the Inner Players

1. In the Dentist Office - wherein I discover the Inner Playground: (mp3)
2. The Inner Playground - defined
3. My Inner Inner City
4. My Own Private Hollywood
5. Part Two: Games for the Inner Player
6. Freeze Tag
7. Mother May I
8. Simon Says
9. Part Three: Building an Inner Playground
10. The Inner Seesaw
11. My Inner Swingset
12. Part Four: Introducing Serious and Silly
13. Serious and Silly (mp3)
14. Kick the Can

When kids play kids' games, like hide-and-seek or duck-duck-goose or mother-may-I, you know, games for kids... they somehow semi-miraculously manage to play together for sometimes hours on end... Together. On their own. Without supervision. In fun.

Somehow the games they play and the ways they play bring them together: constructively, compassionately, magically.

In playing kids' games, kids learn themselves and each other how to build character and community.

Which was the point of a curriculum I developed for inner-city, trouble-making elementary school children almost 35 years ago. Where we showed how kids playing just plain games 90 minutes a week for six weeks became better students: better leaders, better followers, better at creating and sustaining a team effort, better at learning together.

Which is what led me to build my inner playground: figuring that if I give myselves the space and permission, maybe, in play, I'll find sanity.

So I taught myself games.