ABSTRACT
For those inclement weather days when youngsters have allegedly exhausted their own creative resources for self-entertainment, the second section, “Indoor Games,” includes those “suitable for living rooms, basements, and small courtyards.” ese games may require no adult supervision only in that furniture and breakables need to be cleared from the general playing areas. Among some of the more interesting games in this section are “Here Comes Martin,” a game “taught in schools and at playgrounds in connection with Martin Luther King
Day” (68), and “Numbers,” a game that allows children six years and under to practice speedy number groupings (78). In the rst game saluting Martin Luther King, Jr., six to ten players, ranging in age from about three or four to eight, learn the following chant:
Here comes Martin Luther King Marching ’round our great big ring! He needs someone who will share
Follow him and show you care. As the children are in a circle holding hands, one child is selected as King. King circles the chanting children. e object of the game is claried: “At the word ‘care,’ King taps a child and runs around the circle to escape being tapped back. If King is able to take the place of the tapped child, then that youngster becomes King” (68). Such a game can do much to teach children about the civil rights leader’s leadership, particularly his eorts to obtain equal opportunities for everyone through nonviolent activities such as marches. It might also be used to comment on the fact that young children were instrumental in advancing the civil rights cause through marching and singing. Finally, one might reiterate the value of communal singing in this civil rights protest. In this activity that requires no equipment, students are taught through doing rather than through being told.
