Chinarchy

5 Reasons To Love The Lava Bridge Game

by Anderson | 03/16/10 | 5 comments

No other game has gotten my kids so excited as the Lava Bridge game.

I try a lot of different games with my students. Sometimes they are part of English lessons — I created a flash card baseball game today, it was awesome — and sometimes they are just for fun during free time.

This week I taught the kids a game I learned during an orientation weekend for a scholarship I won. I don’t remember the official name of the game, but I call it Lava Bridge.

Here’s how it works: The students have to get from point A to point B. Between whatever you choose for A and B there is lava.

The students have to cross the lava and you provide them some objects to use that are safe — we used hula hoops. As long as they kids are standing in a hula hoop they can’t be burned, but if they touch the ground outside of a hula hoop they are out.

There aren’t enough hula hoops to just lay straight across from A to B. Instead, the kids have to lay them down and walk across them then pick ones up from behind and put them in front. Repeating this relay motion until they are all across.

But you can only pick up a hula hoop and move it to the front if it is empty. (You aren’t allowed to move it if someone is in it, including sliding it.) The students are forced to fit on all but one hoop so that they can keep moving. Depending on the number of players and hoops this can get pretty difficult.

I had about twelve kids today making their way across with three hoops. Which means every time they needed to pick one up to move it, they had to all squeeze onto the remaining two hoops. Fitting six kids in one hula hoop is not easy. But it is hilarious and fun.

So that’s how it works. You have this pack of kids laying down hoops, then squeezing onto the front few so that they can pick up the last one and move it to the front. Rinse and repeat until they make it across.

I know it sounds a little complicated. If you have no idea what I’m talking about let me know in the comments and I’ll try to come up with a better explanation.

Anyway, like I was saying this is the most popular game with my kids. I spent some time trying to figure out why and I came up with the following reasons.

1. Everyone Who Plays, Participates

I’m sure that sounds a little redundant, so let me explain. There are a lot of games that everyone will play in, but not actually get a chance to participate in.

I organized a soccer game last Friday and a lot of the kids wanted to play. Once the game started, though, only a few kids were actually participating. The kids who were better or more confident when it came to soccer were the most involved.

Even when I play flash card games, there is always a tendency for the kids who speak the best English to dominate and they end up participating way more than the kids who actually need the flash card practice.

There isn’t anything wrong with the best kids at a certain game being the most involved. It’s perfectly normal. But it is nice to have a game where you don’t have to worry about that happening.

In Lava Bridge, every single kid who wants to play is very included and involved. They are all holding onto each other on a tiny hoop trying not to fall into the molten hot lava, there is no way not to be involved. Which leads us to number two…

2. It Is An Amazing Teamwork Game

Everyone has to work together moving from hoop to hoop. And then picking up the last hoop and handing it to the person in the front. All this while they are trying to keep their balance and make sure nobody else falls. There is a lot of working together both physically and with verbal communication.

It really is a great teamwork game, which is why it is used as a team building exercise even for adults.

And — like any good teamwork scenario — it allows certain students to take the leadership roles. They can be the ones to come up with ideas of how to move next, or who should be in the back or the front, or any of the other stuff that needs to be worked out. Any student confident enough can attempt to take on a leadership position and try to communicate and organize the rest of the team.

3. You Can Scale The Difficulty

At any time during the game you can do things to affect the difficulty.

You can add new rules limiting how far apart hoops can be, or how many students per hoop, or create certain obstacles they have to go around. The rule that they must start over if anybody falls off makes it really difficult.

You can add or remove hoops to make it easier or harder on the fly.

You can also add a second team and make it a race scenario. Or make them gather certain items at point B and then make it back to point A. Which means they have to do the same thing they just did, but now while carrying something.

There are so many possible rules and variations that the game can stay fresh and fun forever. And by the way, it is fun.

4. The Game Is Really Fun

It is such a blast to play the game. Especially if you have it set up so it’s just challenging enough to be rewarding, but not so hard that it frustrates the kids.

Every single time my kids laid down the final hoop and made it the last little bit to point B, they cheered so loud. All the reasons I just named give the students a great sense of accomplishment.

And it is pretty fun to watch too.

5. It Has Lava

Kids love lava. Seriously, how many times did you play some game growing up involving lava?

We used to jump from pieces of furniture pretending the floor was lava. And I remember only walking on certain tiles in elementary school because we’d all decided the rest of the color tiles were lava.

Even in China, the kids know, love, and respect the power of lava.