Everyday game design on a school playground: children as bricoleurs

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Everyday game design on a school playground: Children as bricoleurs

Rebekah Willett, Oct 2014

International Journal of Play (in press)

Abstract: This article analyses empirical data from an ethnographic study of a

multilingual, multiethnic school playground in London, UK. Using social semiotics, the

article provides an analysis of two playground games which exemplify children’s

everyday game design practices. Children’s game designing activities on school

playgrounds are theorized as processes of ‘bricolage’ in which children use ludic

structures from games and media and representational structures from any number of

cultural sources. In addition, the analysis shows that in their play and game design

process, children draw on and perform particular social positions on the playground.

The analysis employs theories of game design as well as Lévi-Strauss’s discussion of

bricolage to add to current understandings of the improvisational processes involved in

children’s play.

Keywords: Playground games, game design, bricolage, children

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Everyday game design on a school playground: children as bricoleurs

As children are drawn into culture, ‘what is to hand’, becomes more and more

that which the culture values and therefore makes readily available. The child’s

active, transformative practice remains, but it is more and more applied to

materials which are already culturally formed. In this way children become the

agents of their own cultural and social making (Kress, 1997: 13).

In analyzing children’s communication practices, Kress emphasizes the social nature of

sign making as well as the transformative work that children undertake. Further, as

indicated in the excerpt above, the signs through which children communicate are

viewed as embedded with cultural meanings. Referring broadly to communication

practices, Kress’s ideas can be applied to children’s practices of game design

discussed in this article. Through play and improvisational game creation, children draw

on ‘what is to hand’, actively transforming materials and shaping their own cultural

‘texts’. However, children do not have complete agency to create any kind of text from

any kind of material; as indicated by Kress, materials are ‘already culturally formed’, that

is, there are structures that determine or suggest the kinds of transformations that might

occur. This article analyses these process of transformation as children ‘become the

agents of their own cultural and social making’ through play and improvisation on a

school playground.

As discussed below, work on children’s play from various disciplines has considered

and documented improvisational processes; however, no research has analyzed

children’s improvisatory game design processes on playgrounds using concepts from

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game studies (see Salen and Zimmerman, 2004). The aim of this article is to contribute

to existing understandings of children’s play by focusing on game structures and

resources children adapt in their process of play. To theorize this process, the concept

of bricolage is used to account for the texts, game rules and other resources that are

adapted, combined and transformed as children create a new game or structure through

which identities are performed. Importantly, I argue that as bricoleurs, children are

drawing on particular materials which are embedded with cultural meanings. The

process of bricolage involves deliberate selections of materials to suit children’s

purposes, including social and emotional aspects of play. Following a discussion of key

concepts and methodology, the analysis section focuses on two playground games – a

chasing game created on an obstacle course of hula hoops designed by a pair of five-

year-old girls and a clapping game designed by a pair of seven-year-old girls.

Improvisation, bricolage, and game design in children’s play

Research from various disciplines has theorized and documented the processes of

improvisation which occur in children’s play. I am using the term ‘improvise’ to refer to

children’s use of existing resources in the process of making or authoring a ‘text’ such

as a game, art project, narrative, or conversation. Vygotsky’s discussion of the abstract

thought process that occurs when a child pretends that a broomstick is a horse

indicates the prevalence and importance of improvisation (1978). Discussing the

cognitive functions of play, Vygotsky argues, ‘In play a child is always above his

average age…as though he were a head taller than himself’ (1978: 102). Vygotsky

highlights advanced thought processes that occur through play, particularly in

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improvisatory games. In the field of socio-linguistics, researchers also emphasize the

adaption of texts and signs which happen through play. Researchers draw on Bakhtin’s

(1981) concepts of hybridity and intertextuality which suggest that all writers and

speakers necessarily borrow from the texts that surround them, combining and

refashioning them to produce their own stories, games, and other texts (cf. Kress, 1997).

In a similar vein but coming from a social psychological perspective, Corsaro coined the

term ‘interpretive reproduction’ to describe the process of children ‘creatively

appropriating information from the adult world to produce their own unique peer cultures’

(1992: 160). Socio-linguistic studies of children’s pretend play also emphasize the

improvisatory and socially motivated aspect of play (e.g. Edmiston, 2008; Kelly-Byrne,

1989). Sawyer (1997) analyzes children’s conversations in a preschool setting and

argues that the process of mobilizing discourse in play can be seen as ‘improvisational

performance’.

Whilst these studies and theories provide an analytical framework to understand socio-

linguistic aspects of children’s improvisatory play, other studies have looked at the

games themselves for evidence of improvisation and adaption. In their extensive survey

which included over 20,000 children from across the UK from the 1950s to the 1980s,

folklorists Peter and Iona Opie recorded the enormous quantity and diversity of

children’s games and songs (Opie and Opie, 1959, 1969, 1985). Their work also

references historical antecedents to the games children were playing in the 1950s to

1980s, and they record geographically diverse connections to children’s games in the

UK. The Opies’ works contribute to our understanding of children as transmitters and

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adapters of cultural texts.

Also focusing on processes of improvisation in children’s cultures, researchers in the

area of ethnomusicology have considered the various musical traditions children draw

on when creating, practicing and performing musical games (Gaunt, 2006; Marsh, 1999).

Marsh (2008) has done extensive work analyzing the musical and compositional

practices present in children’s play, and argues that children co-construct musical

games through a ‘cycle of experimentation, regularization and control’ (Marsh, 2008:

210). Marsh uses the term ‘cycles of appropriation and reappropriation’ (2008: 185) to

discuss the two-way interaction between musical play and media whereby producers of

popular music adopt movement, music and verbal aspects of children’s play, and in turn

children draw on these sources for their play.

The authors discussed above theorize and document cognition, socio-linguistic

structures, and children’s texts in the process of improvisation. Much of this work relies

broadly on language and texts for analysis – but what about other structures in the

games and in the playground? Games have particular structures which delineate them

from other forms of play; and playground games are social events that occur in

particular cultural contexts. In order to analyze how games work as events on a specific

playground, two further concepts are considered: bricolage and game design.

‘Bricolage’ has a history as an analogy and theoretical term to describe the process of

assembling cultural referents. Lévi-Strauss (1966) used the term ‘bricoleur’ to refer to

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the ‘handyman’ who improvises with materials that are to hand, as exemplified by the

name of the current DIY store in Europe, Monsieur Bricolage; this is contrasted with

more precise and specialized approaches from scientists, engineers, and craftsman. As

a structuralist, Lévi-Strauss used this analogy to argue that structures are key to how

societies operate, and that materials are largely irrelevant. Lévi-Strauss refers to

structures of games as analogous to scientific or engineering structures – in a game

such as football, the structure of the game produces an event such as winning and

losing. In contrast, as Lévi-Strauss describes, ‘Rites and myths…like “bricolage” (which

these same societies only tolerate as a hobby or pastime), take to pieces and

reconstruct sets of events and use them as so many indestructible pieces for structural

patterns in which they serve alternatively as ends or means’ (1966: 32-3). In other

words, ‘the scientist creat[es] events (changing the world) by means of structures and

the “bricoleur” creat[es] structures by means of events’ (22). In considering playground

games, the concept of bricolage allows us to focus on ways the ‘event’ of improvising

with game rules and resources creates ‘structures’ including new games, friendships

and identities.

Finally, in order to analyze improvisation of games on the playground, the field of games

studies offers insight into structures of game design. In order to analyze game design

on the playground, we need to distinguish between games and play and identify the

structures of a game. Denzin (1977) argues that play becomes a game through

repetition of similar sequences – that is, games contain underlying structures which are

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absent in play. Reviewing various game theories, Juul (2003) proposed six features of

games that constitute ‘gameness’. Games

• are rule-based

• have variable, quantifiable outcomes

• have value assigned to different possible outcomes

• require player effort

• involve player attachment to the outcome

• have negotiable consequences (outside or within ‘real life’) (35).

Carr et al. (2006) argue that the ludic structures of games such as rules, economies,

assets, levels, and win-lose states are integrated with representational structures such

as landscapes, characters, narratives, and dialogue. Where the ludic system is

strongest, the representational system might be sketchy and even completely abstract,

and the interest for the player entirely ludic, as in hopscotch, football, and tag.

Conversely, where the representational system is stronger, the ludic system may be

more sparse, as in playground games rich in narrative and dramatic action such as cops

and robbers. Rather than elaborating on these different structures here, these features

are discussed in context of the analysis of two playground games below.

Researching children’s play

This article draws on empirical data collected as part of a larger funded research project

entitled ‘Children’s Playground Games and Songs in the New Media Age’.i One of the

overall aims of the project was to examine the relationship between playground games

and children’s media cultures. The ethnographic component of the project involved

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collecting observational, visual, audio, survey and interview data on two primary school

playgrounds.ii The data for this article come from a state-funded multiethnic, multilingual

school located in central London with 220 pupils on roll ages 3 to 11. All children and

parents consented to take part in the research project; and measures were taken to

help ensure children were comfortable asking us not to record them or to delete any

particular recording. Visits to the playground occurred on average twice per week from

June 2009 to July 2010, and then once per week from September 2010 to February

2011. Following ethnographic methods in educational settings, we documented

playground activities through videos taken by researchers and children, photographs,

and field notes (Carspecken, 1996; Richards, 2011). When collecting data we often

conducted brief impromptu interviews during or just after a play event in which we asked

questions to gain more context of the activities as well as the children’s interpretations

of the events.iii The methods draw on similar studies of playgrounds (Davies, 1982;

Evaldsson and Corsaro, 1998; Thorne, 1993) in which children are seen as social

actors (see James, 2001); and visual data, therefore, are analyzed with reference to

children’s interpretations where possible.

The two games analyzed in this article were recorded on video and include brief

impromptu interviews about the games.iv These two games were chosen partly because

of the availability of contextual data. In addition to the two videos, field notes and other

videos which included these girls and references to particular resources help inform the

analysis, particularly the social context of the games. Two of the four girls who feature in

the games were eager research participants, often requesting use of recording

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equipment; and one of them was part of a ‘children’s panel’ which assisted the project in

various ways (see Willett et al., 2013). The other two girls appear frequently in our data,

as do their siblings. In addition, we have a large set of chasing, hula hoop, and clapping

game videos and observations, providing another important contextual resource for the

analysis, as these are key structures in the two games. The two games were also

chosen because they adapt distinct contrasting sets of resources in the process of

bricolage.

The analysis draws broadly on social semiotics, focusing on underlying ludic and

narrative structures of children’s games as well as structures embedded in social

relations such as identity, friendships, and power. Drawing on Fairclough’s theories

(2000), game design is seen as a way of negotiating both ‘language’ and ‘discourse’ –

in this case children are manipulating the ‘language’ or ‘grammar’ of games (e.g. rules,

narratives, texts) as well as ‘the set of discursive practices associated with an institution

or a social domain’ (170). On a school playground, the analysis of discursive practices

might take into account discourses concerning child development, play, gender, age,

ethnicity, friendship, and so on. Using this analytical framework, the analysis which

follows provides a close look at the ‘language’ of the games as well as a discussion of

the social contexts in which the game construction is embedded.

The ‘really scary’ maze game

This game featured a group of seven 4- to 6-year-old girls who were using a ‘maze’ of

plastic hula hoops which were lying flat on the ground in a corner of the playground (see

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Image 1). This game developed over about five minutes during a lunchtime recess near

the end of the school year, when children ages 4 to 11 were on the playground. The key

players in this group were in the youngest year group present. The event started not as

a game but rather as an impromptu obstacle course with girls stepping from one hoop to

another. Gradually different ludic and narrative structures were added which to create a

chasing gamev involving rules about where players could step, as well as characters

such as zombies and ghosts who were chasers and who turned other players into

chasers if caught. As the chasing game evolved several of the players ignored the

game and either left or continued in parallel play, using the maze as a simple obstacle

course.

[Insert Image 1: Hula Hoop Maze]

The key developers of the chasing game were two 5-year-old girls who frequently

played pretend games together - Lily and Sophia.vi At this school, children started their

first year, Reception, on different dates, depending on their birthday. Both Lily and

Sophia had October birthdays, and therefore were the oldest in their Reception class

and had been at the school for the entire school year. Lily was a leader in this group,

and we have many recordings of her. She was particularly keen to perform verbal

improvisation (narratives and songs). Recordings of Lily include narrations of stories

she created ‘on-the-spot’, lengthy episodes of socio-dramatic play which she narrated,

and performances of songs which were often improvised. Lily had a brother at the

school who was six years older and who largely ignored her on the playground. In

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contrast, Sophia had a sister who was two years older, and Sophia frequently switched

between playing with her own year group and her sister’s year group. Recordings of

Sophia include a variety of activities with children up to two years older than her:

catching, clapping, singing, skipping rope, pretend play, and games with hula hoops.

The video we have of the maze game includes Lily and Sophia taking breaks to

participate in an informal impromptu interview. In this conversation with the girls, it

emerged that the game involved ludic and representational structures found in

videogames, playground games, and obstacle course type games in ‘real’ and virtual

spaces. The two girls explained that there were levels to their game: on Level One, the

rules were to step inside the hoops; and on Level Two, they used the space in between

the hoops to envision a maze which they had to navigate:

Rebekah (interviewer): What are the rules of the game you’re playing?

Lily: now the rules are, the gaps in between, you have to go through them,

and it’s a maze where you have to go through. If you go in a hoop, then

you’re out for five minutes.

Rebekah: If you go in a hoop –

Sophia: - you’re out for five minutes –

Rebekah: What do you mean, go in a hoop, ‘cuz it looks to me as if everyone

was stepping inside the hoops?

Sophia: But first we were allowed to step in the hoops, and now we’re not.

Lily: and in Level Two, we have to go through a sort of maze, you see [points

at players]

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Level One is physically the easiest because the hoops are very large and close

together, therefore girls can set both feet inside a hoop and step over the gap to

reach the next hoop (see Image 1). Level Two involves navigating narrow spaces

that require occasional balancing on one foot or hopping over a hoop. As the girls

indicate in the above excerpt, Level Two is harder, with the risk of stepping in a

hoop resulting in a five-minute penalty.

The physical and visual structure of the game is similar to other playground games

such as variations of hopscotch which also feature navigating a space divided by

lines, as well as games with rules about (not) stepping on cracks or lines. Further,

visual maze puzzles are commonly found in children’s culture (e.g. puzzle books,

board games), as well as being dominant structures in platform type videogames.

We can also see here the ludic structures from games such as ‘Follow the leader’.

As a leader amongst this friendship group, Lily often suggested games as well as

rules within the games. In the video of this game, she was calling out rules and

narrative structures, for example, ‘Level Two are the gaps, go through the gaps’

and ‘[Sagal]’s the Zombie’. The Opies’ (1969) description of ‘Follow my leader’

includes variations similar to the maze game in which a leader increasingly does

more difficult tasks, which we could define as levels, with the goal of getting the

other players ‘out’. Levels are also a feature of videogames, including simple web-

based games; and frequently children’s videogames include levels as a way of

scaffolding players’ progression through the game. Scaffolding through levels

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appears in educational videogames, where the design is offered as a way of

meeting children’s educational needs. In more commercial entertainment

videogames, levels work to maintain players’ interests by introducing the game

and then gradually building in-game skills and knowledge. Later in the interview,

these two girls mention videogames they had at home, including Super Sonic

Hedgehog which reportedly involved 100 levels. Therefore, we can see the ludic

structures in the maze game, i.e. navigating a space, penalties for mis-stepping,

and levels of difficulty, as potentially drawn from a range of games and cultural

references in these girls’ lives.

The representational structures become more apparent in Level Three of the maze

game, which includes ghosts as well as a geographical sense of space:

Lily: [excitedly] There’s a ghost! There’s a ghost on Level Three!

Rebekah: On Level Three there’s a ghost? Oh no, how did you find the

ghost?

Lily: The thing is, there’s a ghost, and we have to catch it –

Sophia: And then they’re dead!

Lily: Yeah, but then more ghosts joined, so whoever gets caught by the ghost

is a ghost.

...

Sophia: The hula-hoops is ice, and the gaps are, is the world.

Here we see ludic structures of chasing games being added to the existing maze game.

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The Opies’ category of chasing games, ‘Chasing in Difficult Environments’, in which

spaces have particular rules aligns with this iteration of the game (1969: 69-70). Similar

to the rules in the maze game, the Opies mention games such as ‘Pirates’ or

‘Shipwrecks’ where ‘the floor is the sea, and anyone who steps in the sea has to

become the pirate’ (1969: 69). Representational structures evident in the above excerpt

(i.e. ghost, zombie, ice, world) have no specific source, and in the interview the girls had

difficulties identifying particular videogames or other media where they had encountered

these representations. Similar to the ludic structures in the game, these representations

draw on a variety of cultural resources in these girls’ lives including playground games.

Up to this point, the game aligns with several features outlined by Juul (2003): there are

rules, the game requires effort, particularly as the levels increase, and losing has an

outcome of sitting out for five minutes. Combined with the ludic structures, the

representational structures create a game that moves even closer to Juul’s gameness

definition, with girls demonstrating clear ‘attachment to the outcome’, as evident in the

girls’ excitement in moving to more difficult levels:

Rebekah: How was Level Three?

Sophia: Really scary!

Lily: Now we’re on Level Four with a zombie! [screams and jumps up and

down]

The presence of a zombie not only developed the ‘gameness’ of the game by adding

the key feature of ‘attachment to outcome’, it also drew on a common playground

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reference and game text. We were not able to trace zombies to any specific media text

or narrative in the children’s experiences; however, we saw t-shirts with zombie

graphics and recorded references to playground games which included zombies,

although rarely with five-year-olds. Further, at this point in global culture, zombies were

a popular reference in media for young adults, including games, movies, books,

websites, and whole scale enactments such as zombie walks. As in the maze game,

zombies were used as scary and mysterious characters on the playground. By

including zombies in the maze game, the girls signaled their awareness of this popular

text, thus demonstrating their cultural capital, as well as their desire to experience the

fear that comes with a zombie. Their inclusion of zombies might also signal these girls’

positioning of themselves as no longer interested in socio-dramatic games played by

younger children in their class such as ‘schools’ and ‘families’, which are commonly

associated with young children’s pretend play (Garvey, 1977/1990; Corsaro, 1997;

Sawyer, 1997). As zombies are part of older children’s media culture, these girls’

inclusion of zombies positions them as mature and able to handle such media, as well

as being ready to move up to the next year group in which these cultural references are

more prevalent.

The emotional aspect of the game is also a key component of their design. Not only do

ghosts and zombies add the challenge of being chased whilst doing the maze, they also

create a more phantasmagoric gaming experience. Sutton-Smith (1997) argues that in

the rhetoric of the imaginary, play is framed from a romantic, individualistic perspective

as a creative, free and original act connected with artists, composers, inventors, and

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writers. He argues that in this romantic idealization of play, games which are chaotic,

nonsensical, and irrational are dismissed. By adding a phantasmagoric rhetoric to the

imaginary, Sutton-Smith attempts to add irrational forms of play as well as the rational

ones implied by rhetoric of the imaginary. In the maze game, this phantasmagoric

aspect adds heightened emotion - a key aspect of play, according to Sutton-Smith, who

argues in more recent presentations on ‘Play as Emotional Survival’ (June 2009) that

play is ‘a way of getting mastery over desperate and dangerous emotions.’ By adding

ghosts and zombies in the maze, the girls’ game design incorporates chaotic moments

which add feelings of fear and risk in the game – as indicated in the girls’ comments as

well as their screams. Applying Sutton-Smith’s ideas, as they progress through the

game and master each progressively more scary ‘level’, they might also be learning to

cope with feelings of fear and risk, albeit in a controlled and safe environment.

The analysis of gaming structures provides insight into the ‘events’ that the girls

combined and refashioned in their act of bricolage. As bricoleurs, the girls have used

the ludic and narrative elements to create a desired structure – a ‘really scary’ and

physically challenging game which demonstrated their knowledge of popular culture,

readiness to move their play interests to the next year group, and ability to cope with

risk.

Clapping games – Jelly Belly Custard/Lemonade

In complete contrast to the ludic and narrative systems above, I turn now to clapping

games and analyze the process of bricolage which resulted in a game that the players

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said combined the text of a poem, ‘Jelly Belly Custard’, with the rhythm and actions of a

clapping game, ‘Lemonade’. Although clapping games contrast with other more rule-

and outcome-based games, we can still identify the ludic structures of these games.

Thinking about dance-based videogames helps illustrate the point, as these

videogames apply rules and point systems to rhythmic body movements. In these

games, players are given points for rhythm and actions which are measured by a

player’s movement and touch. There are difficulty levels with more/less complex moves

and faster/slower speeds.

Similarly, with clapping games, success is measured through players’ rhythm and touch.

We have evidence that players recognized difficulty levels in clapping games based on

the complexity and speed of a game. Players told us which games were simpler in

terms of clapping actions and rhythm; and they told us that when learning and teaching

games, the speed is altered to make the game easier and actions were sometimes

simplified (see Bishop and Burn, 2013; see also Marsh, 2008: 139). Although points are

not awarded in playground clapping games, children who are adept at clapping achieve

a certain amount of social status within the group of ‘wannabe’ clapping gamers. We

observed pairs of children playing clapping games, with other children looking on – a

space children described in terms of learning. This aligns with Lave and Wenger’s

(1991) work on ‘situated learning’ (see also Marsh 2008: 143) which analyses ways

members of a ‘community of practice’ are brought together by a common activity

centering on an area of knowledge. Lave and Wenger examine ways learners join a

community of practice on the periphery and gradually move toward the center of the

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community as they become involved in the practices of that community. This explains

our observations of clapping games. Here, age boundaries are crossed, with younger

children who are adept at playing games able to play with older children. We found that

siblings who shared clapping games outside of school crossed age boundaries on the

school playground. Girls were the predominant clapping game players, although some

boys occasionally joined on the periphery.

Using Juul’s (2003) classification, clapping games contain key features of games:

• there are fixed rules: players have to start together, match other players’ rhythm,

movement and words, mirror actions, and so on

• there are variable and quantifiable outcomes which are valorized: successful

players complete the game whereas less successful players have to start over,

simplify, go slower, and so on; expert players play games which have more

complex actions, rhythms, lyrics and are faster; successful players play with

more expert players

• effort is put into playing the game, as evidenced through repeated playing and

even practicing against a wall

• players get pleasure out of completing the game successfully, as evidenced by

the frequency which clapping games appear in our data (see Willett et al., 2013)

• there are real-life consequences to being able to play the game: entry to social

activities

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As discussed earlier, various research analyses the transformative work children do in

playing clapping and other musical games (Gaunt, 2006; Marsh, 2008). The work of the

Opies (1969) documents historical and geographical changes in texts and practices

related to clapping games, dating back to the nineteenth century across Europe and

North America. Bishop (2014) analyses one particular clapping game, and traces the

changes that one group of children implemented over the course of eighteen months,

referring to various media as sources for their clapping games including films, TV shows,

and YouTube. Along similar lines, Gaunt (2006) analyses the relationship between

black girls’ musical games and black musical traditions of the past century, including

folksongs, R&B, and hip hop, arguing that ‘there exists a symbiotic or dialogic

relationship in which both spheres are creating and refashioning new musical ideas,

based on pre-existing material from the other realm’ (107) (cf. Beresin, 2010). This

research indicates that as children improvise clapping games to suit their purposes and

practices, they draw on various resources in their act of playing these games such as

popular music, film, TV, and social media as well as peers and family members.

By analyzing these practices in terms of game design, it is possible to see that not only

are children drawing on social and cultural traditions and meanings, making sense and

transforming these through their improvisational practices; children are also drawing on

the gaming structures of clapping games – exploring what these games are good for

and drawing on the underlying ludic and representational structures of the games. The

text for the game analyzed in this section, ‘Jelly Belly Custard’, is a widely-documented

children’s ‘gross-out’ poem containing references to an unappetizing meal including ‘a

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dead dog’s eye’ and a cup of vomit (see Opie and Opie, 1959; Roud, 2010). I was

unable to find any documentation of this poem being used in the context of a clapping

game, apart from on our playground. The clapping pattern used for the game was

adapted from ‘Lemonade’, a very popular game on this playground observed amongst

children ages 4 to 11 over the course of the study and widely documented with

variations on YouTube.vii

The two girls who first created this game, Ruth and Cathy, were both nearly 8-years-old

and were close friends. The girls appear frequently in games we recorded, often as a

pair or in a larger group of girls from the same year group. Both girls participated in

clapping games on the playground, and they recorded several clapping games, poems

and routines for our research project. One routine consisted of a poem with actions

which they had ‘made up’ when they had travelled on holiday together. Typical of many

clapping games generally, the recordings included scatological humor and taboo

references to sex and sexuality. Cathy has a sister who is three years younger, and

occasionally played with Cathy on the playground. Ruth was an avid reader and

occasionally brought books onto the playground, including a song book.

The girls say they learned the text of ‘Jelly Belly Custard’ from a book of poetry which

Ruth bought on a recent trip to Australia to visit family. The book contained this poem

with an accompanying illustration of children doing a clapping game, although the book

did not indicate any particular clapping sequences. In the process of bricolage, the girls

turn ‘Jelly Belly Custard’ into a clapping game, significantly adapting the clapping

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actions and rhythms from ‘Lemonade’. As bricoleurs, the girls use existing texts and

practices, namely ‘Jelly Belly Custard’, ‘Lemonade’, the popularity of clapping games

with girls in their class, and their friendship and experience of inventing routines

together. The process of bricolage involved improvising a new game which

demonstrates their friendship, skill in clapping games, and a gendered practice that

contains an appealing ‘gross-out’ poem.

To illustrate the complexity of the process of adapting the two texts, the analysis which

follows focuses on the rhythmic and haptic elements of the new game. Both ‘Jelly Belly

Custard’ (JBC) and ‘Lemonade’ are in four-time with a standard on the beat emphasis,

i.e. there are four beats or pulses per phrase and the stress lies on each beat within

each phrase. Comparing the poetry meter of the two rhymes reveals significant

differences (see Tables 1 and 2). ‘Lemonade’ contains a simple meter which is

repeated throughout, whereas JBC contains a mixture of different meters. In their

bricolage, then, the girls adapted the simple clapping meter to fit the complicated meter

of the poem.

Both games contain a basic three-way clapviii:

• clap with a partner with hands parallel to the ground - one hand facing down, one

hand facing up (down-up clap - D/U)

• clap with a partner with hands facing each other (parallel to bodies) (clap

partner’s hands - C/P)

• clap own hands together (clap own hands - C/O)

22

As there are three gestures being used in texts with four-beat lines, the C/O gesture is

repeated to create a four-beat clapping sequence. The C/O gesture matches the meter

of the words, for example, in ‘Lemonade’ the wordless clap echoes the cretic footix. In

JBC the girls adjust the C/O clap to match the spondee; and in three places in JBC, the

girls insert rests by pausing to match the meter of the poem (spondee with caesura).

The game changes in the second half of ‘Lemonade’ when the clapping sequence is

repeated with no extra C/O gestures. This creates a more difficult three-beat clap over

a four-beat line which extends over eight beats in ‘Lemonade’. In JBC, the girls use a

three-beat clap over the four-beat line starting in the third line, and in the fifth line they

improvise further with matching the words, moves and meter by doing one hard C/P,

essentially ‘slamming’ their partners’ hands on the word ‘slam’ and then pausing. The

girls add the word ‘ewww’ to the end of JBC as well as the gesture of thumbs pointing

over shoulder, thus adding their interpretive comment on the text of the poem as well as

adapting the meter.

[Insert Tables 1 and 2]

The analysis shows that the game the girls created is not simply a matter of using the

clapping from one game with the text of a poem. The girls adapted the three-way clap

by inserting rests, eliminating repeated gestures, and repeating the three-way clap in

order to develop a challenging game that would match the rhythm, meter and words of

the poem. Significant to this game, the resulting structure is much more challenging to

23

perform than any of the constituent parts – as experienced clappers, the girls

improvised to create this new challenge which potentially excluded children who were

not as experienced at clapping. However, one of the appeals of clapping games is the

challenge, and in fact, Cathy was able to teach the new game to her younger sister who

in turn taught it to another experienced clapper in her class. Further, by using existing

resources such as ‘Lemonade’ which other children had access to, particularly those

taking part in clapping games, the challenge was lowered, making the game inclusive to

children interested in this practice.

Returning to the concept of bricolage, the girls were playing with the elements of

clapping games and poetry including rhythm, meter, words, and clapping actions. The

process involved using the clapping game elements to represent a poem as a particular

type of game – using Juul’s (2003) terms, one that involved skill and practice or effort,

one that (girl)friends played together and thus had ‘real life consequences’, and one that

involved pleasure. In addition to the pleasure of playing together, there was the added

pleasure of performing a ‘gross-out’ poem, drawing on conventions of including

subversive material in clapping games (see Ackerly, 2007). Although they could have

performed the poem as a recitation, the act of bricolage turned it into a game that

friends created and shared with each other as part of a friendship activity.

Conclusion

Both games analyzed in this article exemplify complex processes that occur in

children’s play as they improvise with existing resources, as discussed in previous

24

literature on children’s cognitive and socio-linguistic processes involved in play. By

analyzing the game design elements of these two games, a further layer of complexity

emerges in relation to their improvisation processes; and by viewing the girls as

bricoleurs, the social structures involved in these processes also come into view. The

girls use ludic structures from games and media and representational structures from

any number of cultural sources to create playground games which exemplify Juul’s

(2003) elements of ‘gameness’; further, the process of bricolage involves both drawing

on and performing particular social positions on the playground. The maze game

demonstrates the process of imagining hula hoops lying on the ground as a maze of

land and ice riddled with danger; and the game shows the process of developing an

intertextual game that positions Lily and Sophia as five-year-olds on the playground in

very particular ways. As bricoleurs on the playground, Lily and Sophia played with

representational structures such as ghosts and zombies to create ‘attachment to the

outcome’ as well as positioning themselves as young girls who are interested in ‘really

scary’ games. They also draw on ludic structures such as rules, variable outcomes, and

increasingly more challenging ‘levels’ to sustain the maze game. Ruth and Cathy’s

clapping game demonstrates complex understandings of rhythm and meter. As

bricoleurs, they used ludic structures to create complex clapping rhythms which

demanded effort to be put into the game and reinforced their positions as friends and

clapping game experts. Rather than drawing on materials in a haphazard fashion and

creating any text from any material, these processes of bricolage reveal the complex

cultural and social aspects of children’s game design which involve children actively

positioning themselves on the playground in particular ways.

25

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Julia C. Bishop for her valuable input on the analysis of the

clapping game, and Chris Richards for his constant feedback and support and for

sharing his insight on the players of this playground.

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Image 1: Hula Hoop Maze

Table 1: ‘Jelly Belly Custard’ text, meter and moves JBC Text Poetry Meter Moves Jelly belly cus-tard Trochee Trochee spondee D/U, C/P, C/O, C/O piz-za pie (rest) Spondee spondee (with

caesura) D/U, C/P, C/O, rest

all mixed up with a Spondee dactyl D/U, C/P, C/O, D/U dead dog’s eye (rest) Spondee spondee (with

caesura) C/P, C/O, D/U, rest

Slam it on a pan-cake Trochee Trochee spondee C/P rest, rest, rest nice and thick (rest) Spondee spondee (with

caesura) D/U, C/P, C/O, rest

Then serve it up with a Dactyl dactyl Turn around touch the ground gesture

cup of sick eww Spondee spondee Elbows bent, thumbs point over shoulders

31

Table 2: ‘Lemonade’ text, meter and moves Lemonade Text Poetry Meter Moves Lemon-ade (clap-clap clap) Cretic cretic D/U, C/P, C/O (double), C/O crunchy ice (clap-clap clap) Cretic cretic D/U, C/P, C/O (double), C/O beat it once (clap-clap clap) Cretic cretic D/U, C/P, C/O (double), C/O beat it twice (clap-clap clap) Cretic cretic D/U, C/P, C/O (double), C/O Lemon-ade crunchy ice Cretic cretic D/U, C/P, C/O, D/U beat it once beat it twice Cretic cretic C/P, C/O, D/U, C/P Turn around touch the ground Cretic cretic Turn around touch the ground

gesture Freeze ‘Freeze’ in a chosen gesture i The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of the Beyond Text programme and ran from April 2009 to March 2011- see http://www.beyondtext.ac.uk/ and www.bl.uk/playtimes. ii Chris Richards and Julia Bishop were the dedicated ethnographic researchers on the playgrounds, and Rebekah Willett and Jackie Marsh were the co-investigators in London and Sheffield (respectively). iii More in-depth interviews in which children viewed and discussed video footage of themselves were conducted outside of playtime. Data collection and analysis as well as ethical considerations are discussed in-depth in Richards (2011) and Willett et al. (2013). iv Both videos are available on the British Library website, ‘Playtimes: A Century of Games and Rhymes’ (www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/playground/). v I am using the classification ‘chasing game’ from the Opies (1969) to designate games in which ‘a player tries to touch others who are running freely in a prescribed area’. In line with the maze game, chasing games includes games in which there is a ‘Proliferation of Chasers’, and ‘Chases in a Difficult Environment’ (xvii-xviii). vi All children’s names used in this article are pseudonyms. vii ‘Lemonade’ does not appear in major published collections of playground games before 2009, but there is an unpublished version used for a two-ball game collected in 1960 in Workington, Cumbria, by Father Damian Webb (Julia C. Bishop, 2013, personal correspondence). viii Terms and abbreviations are from Bishop and Burn (2013) which are adopted from Marsh (2008). ix A cretic foot is three syllables which are stressed, unstressed, stressed; trochee is a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one; spondee is two long syllables; caesura is a pause; and dactyl is a long syllable followed by two short syllables.