At the end of the day on a recent Friday afternoon, students at Northwood Elementary School in Hilton dropped everything they were doing to take 50 minutes and play the game Mancala. Different classrooms and grade levels combined so that students had the opportunity to get to know other children in the school. The “Drop Everything and Play” event carries out this year’s theme of “community.”
“Our hope is to show how powerful play can be and how it brings people together no matter their age,” said Julie Fiege, sixth grade teacher.
The game of Mancala, one of the oldest known games to still be widely played today, is a two-player turn-based strategy board game played with small stones, beans, or seeds and rows of holes. The objective is usually to capture all or some set of the opponent’s pieces. The game was chosen for “Drop Everything and Play” because multiple game boards could be assembled with found items. Some students played active games in the gymnasium as well.
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