Yeah! Yeah! I KNOW you're too old for "Musical Chairs". But you're the best age for teaching this modified game, which isn't quite as simple as the original. Kids often learn some things more easily from those just a litle older than they. (I confirmed this by being allowed to teach my peers in the 6th grade.) When an adult starts pontificating, a kid may think, "Well, that's easy for YOU to say!" Remeber the standard game?
- Initially there is one fewer chairs than the number of kids playing the game. At the start of each "round", a kid stands behind each chair.
- A person at the piano starts playing and the kids march in a circle, around in front of the chairs, to their sides, then behind. Marching, marching, until the piano music stops.
Then each kid rushes to occupy a chair. But at least one kid is "left out"and must leave the game. So that kid must leave the game of "Musical Chairs".
- Since this makes chairs and kids equinumerous, a chair is also removed from the game and the music starts again. Etc.
- The game ends when only one kid occupies a chair.
This clearly is a zero-sum game with one winner and a pack of losers.
But I modify it, for a purpose, and the result idoes not have the structure of a zero=sum game, but of a
, since ALL ARE "WINNERS".
MODIFICATION: Kids and chairs are EQUINUMEROUS at the start of the MATHTIVITY, and REMAIN so, because NO CHAIR IS REMOVED.PURPOSE: To see MOST OR ALL OF THE DIFFERENT WAYS THAT THE CHAIRS CAN BE OCCUPIED, ignoring the nonzerosum-game understructure.
Thus, this becomes an exercise in permutations, similar to the "transactivities" described elsewhere.
The point can be made that a GROUND for UNDERSTANDING COMBINATORICS (needed in a DOMOCRASY, in a MARKET SOCIETY, in RELIGIOUS LIFE where MANY OR ALL MAY BE "SAVED") has been ignored up to now.
The teacher or "supervisor" can guide the kid in becoming aware of the various permutations and the comparisons with transmuting letters or colors or tones, etc.