Friday, May 23, 2014

Games Cheerleaders Play

It was a Friday near the end of the school year, and I ended up subbing for the cheerleading coach. She taught science the rest of the day. It was only for 6th period that I had the cheerleaders. All sitting in one classroom. With nothing to do.

(Well, technically, they had a "study hall". But rarely do the students in these types of classes, i.e. student government, the yearbook, the golf team, do anything on days like this.)

I managed to get roll taken, and then I sat back. One girl asked the others if they'd like to play a game.

Days like these I get to be a fly on the wall. They know I'm there, but quickly they forget all about me. And I get to see them in their natural habitat. What sort of game were they going to play?

The girl announced that they were going to play "Going on a Cruise Ship". Each girl got to take two items with her. And if she got the items wrong, she was booted off the ship. Now, the rules of the game were kind of unclear, because one girl said she'd bring her swimsuit but was booted off while another said she'd bring an alligator but could stay.

But that was the point. From playing the game and listening in, the girls had to catch on. (A girl near me explained the situation.) It was a puzzle. And it ticked a couple of the girls off.

(I've done a couple cursory Google searches, but I have been unable to find the games. So, sorry, I can't provide rules.)

Apparently, they played this game at cheer camp last summer. And there were other games, too. After they all figured out the cruise ship rules (or some just gave up).

The next game had to do with a bouncing ball. Not an actual bouncing ball, but a fictional ball that one girl threw to another, but that girl missed it, and it went... That's what they had to guess. Who had the ball? This one they figured out pretty quickly.

Then the first girl took three dry erase markers from the board. She arranged them on the floor in the middle of the group, saying that she was "drawing a picture" of one of the girls. (No vandalism took place.) Then the girls had to guess who she drew.

Now, for me it was hard to follow along as I didn't know the girls' names. I learned a few as they did all of this, but from my vantage point and where the dry erase markers were, it was hard for me to see the full picture. (I could have gotten up. They wouldn't have objected if I sat among them. But I didn't.)

The last game had them looking at the moon (figuratively) and having something with them. Again, no rules. They had to figure it out themselves.

It drove some of them crazy. One girl would think she had it, attempt to do something using the rules as she understood them, and find out that she had it wrong.

I thought it was a great mental exercise. Very educational. Of course, I didn't mention that. They were having too much fun. (Or maybe "fun". You know, the kind that makes you crazy because you want to know how it works. Kind of like magic tricks.)

20 comments:

  1. That's a great way to spend the time and keep the mind strong instead of always texting or looking through the I pod or is it I pad . reminds me of some camping games I did with my former in-laws and it was fun

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  2. Wow, that's awesome! We would never have spent time playing games like that, especially not of our own initiative. I'm curious of those cruise ship rules...

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  3. Wait, there are people who use study hall for something other than goofing off?

    What weird games. The rules sound quite arbitrary. I'm surprised the drawing thing didn't turn into an insult of some kind, but maybe that was just my high school.

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  4. As a middle grade author, I often find myself eavesdropping on young girls' conversations. Something like that would be priceless to me, especially in a middle school/junior high setting. It's fun to watch even teenage girls interact, honestly!

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    1. Yep, there's nothing like being the sub in the room. They don't take me seriously sometimes, and I get to listen.

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  5. Very interesting games. I'm sure it took great reasoning skills and remembering things to put together the rules; that's why maybe some of the girls got frustrated. However, I think it was a very effective way to spend the class period. Did the teacher give you any direction on what would happen in the class?

    betty

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  6. Gosh I love your stoical outlook on teaching Liz :)

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  7. I would love to know the rules...and can they change?...and who decides?... and how do you win?... or can you win?... and how do they know one game is over so they can move onto the next game? ... Maybe my daughter will learn these next year in middle school and can shed some light...I hope so.

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    1. I don't think you win these. It looked like the idea was to figure out the object, and those who did won.

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  8. I'd like to know, too. I just googled around and couldn't find anything, either. You should find one of those kids and ask her.

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  9. The cruise ship game sounds like one I used to play online where the things you were taking had to spell out your name. So on each go I'd take a cat, a lamp, an iguana, a calculator and a kangaroo.

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    1. It was similar to that, but they only could bring two things.

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  10. Sounds to me like they were thinking of ways to put others down, to make fun of people who didn't get it...even though they were making it up as they went. Guess you can call it a game and adults don't know they're picking on people. And it sounds like whomever made the rules made them so they could boot someone out...snooty like. Study halls sure aren't what they used to be. We were actually expected to use ours, and did, that way we had less homework.

    Traveling Suitcase

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    1. It didn't feel like they were picking on each other. It was kind of inclusive, actually. They were trying to help those that didn't get it, but without actually telling them the rules.

      If it had felt like they were picking on each other, I would have put a stop to it.

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  11. This game sounds vaguely familiar somewhere in the archives of my brain but I can't place the context. I think maybe we played it at Girl Guides? I would have been the last one to cotton on of course, because I'm too impatient and not very lateral-thinking!

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    1. Girl Guides. Cheerleaders. Places where girls congregate. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that other groups of girls had versions of these games.

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  12. The cruise ship game sounds like a drinking game we played in college "I'm going on a vacation" where the first person makes up the rule and everyone has to guess the rule based on what others could bring (starts with the same letter as your first name, your major, your hometown...)

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