Swing Games

I’ve been watching my students play on the swings lately, and I’ve observed a number of games that seem to bring them great enjoyment. Here are descriptions of the more popular ones:

Marriage
This is a simple one. To play, notice when two people swinging seem to be moving synchronously. If they’re reaching their forward peaks and backward peaks at exactly the same time, they’re married. This is particularly fun when the two people swinging absolutely don’t want it said that they’re married. They will protest, and you can ignore them and call out that they’re married over and over again.

This game has political variations. Either decide that it has to be a boy and a girl that are married (trickier, when most of the kids swinging are one gender), or go with the times and decide that anyone can be married. This gives greater flexibility in whom you can declare as married. If you’re really progressive, you can even call out threesomes.

King/Queen/Peasant
Like Marriage, this involves noticing other people’s swinging, but unlike Marriage, it can be desirable to include yourself in your noticing. If you think you’re swinging the highest of all the kids, you can shout that you’re the king (or the queen, depending on whether you want to stick with gendered titles). This has the added bonus that there will probably be someone who will argue with you about whether you or they are actually higher, and other friends can be drawn into the debate to choose sides. If you want to admit the other person is higher, you can declare yourself prince or princess. People swinging lower than you can be labeled peasants, and you can feel superior to them until your legs get tired.

The Dangerous Game
This is the current favorite, perhaps because it’s only allowed when younger children aren’t on the playground to get unsafe ideas of what to do around swings. Stand on one side of the swing set. As soon as the person swinging nearest you hits their lowest point and starts traveling up and forward or up and backward, run directly through where they were swinging only seconds earlier. Stop just before the next swing, close enough that they could reach out and touch you if the teacher wasn’t watching. Once they’ve passed their nadir, dart past them. Continue until you reach the other side of the swing set, then turn around and come back. This can be done with a partner (all the better for squealing at close calls). If this isn’t dangerous enough for your taste, you can try running past all the swings in one go, though if the teacher sees you, you might be told that’s “not safe”.

Kickball
Similar to The Dangerous Game in that it pushes the boundaries of what the teacher will allow, and can only be done when younger children aren’t around, but passé now that The Dangerous Game has been invented. This game requires someone who isn’t swinging to throw a nerf ball at you while you’re swinging (other balls can be used, but only if the teacher is in a different part of the playground). As the ball comes near you, try to kick the ball so it flies through the air, the farther the better.

And there you have it: four fabulous games to play, good for creating arguments or making your teacher cringe. The only swing activity that’s better is jumping off!