Playground Fun

Playground Fun captures traditional and modern playground and street games and teaches them to a whole new generation. More than simply an online archive, it allows children to make up their own games and to create variations of existing ones. At the same time, it encourages children to find out more about the games older generations played in their childhoods and to discover games from other cultures.

Playground Fun has two phases. The first phase will assemble a core body of traditional games accompanied by history, context, video and variations on a theme. During this time, an educational co-ordinator will work with six schools based in London and East Anglia to create a wonderful, media-rich web experience. Children between seven and nine years old in these schools will talk to family members, interview older people at local day centres about the games they played as children, and gather games from other cultures. The results will be brought together on the Playground Fun site.

In the second phase, primary-school-aged children from across the country will be encouraged to add to the site using a unique ‘game builder’ tool. They might add games they have created themselves or possibly a different rhyme to be used with a game that is already featured on the site.

Playground Fun will build into a wonderful resource for parents, educators and, most importantly, for children themselves. It will be available to the public at the beginning of 2005.

Based on an original idea by The University of Glasgow, Playground Fun will sit on Learn.co.uk and be developed by Learnthings Ltd., a leading provider of quality interactive e-learning materials and part of the Guardian group.