USING GAMES AND MOTOR FAIRY TALES

When designing activities for young children, it is essential to focus on their natural need for fun, using imagination as a powerful tool to engage them. Children live in a world of fantasy where animism is part of everyday life. They often take on the roles of cartoon or animated film characters and share these imaginative experiences with their peers.

In this context, games and motor fairy tales (Seclì P., Farnese A., 2021) become a highly suitable and accessible strategy to engage them in sports. Indeed, incorporating storytelling into sports activities can help engage even the most hesitant children, sparking their interest in movement and participation.

Moreover, games represent a valuable learning opportunity, especially for children with visual impairments. By nature, games involve constantly changing situations that require children to continuously adapt and adjust their behavior. For this reason, games are an effective way to foster learning processes and problem-solving skills.

Games also serve as a powerful tool for inclusion. Once the rules of the game are established, although they may be modified or adapted, they remain the same for all participants, allowing each player to develop strategies and work toward the game’s objectives in a shared, equitable setting.

Below, we present some examples of games that use storytelling to make physical activity more motivating and engaging.

​The Frozen Witch

Choose one child to play the role of the “witch”. Give them a sound ball or ask them, at the beginning of the game, to clap their hands while moving, so that visually impaired players can perceive the sound and locate them.
A child with visual impairment can also play the role of the witch, as long as they are accompanied by a guide.

Each visually impaired child should be assigned a guide who helps them avoid bumping into objects or other players during the game.

At the teacher’s signal, the witch starts running and tries to tag the other children. Any child tagged must freeze, standing still with legs apart, and waiting to be freed by a peer. To free a frozen child, another player must crawl under their legs.

To make the game inclusive, each child should say their name aloud while moving, so that visually impaired participants can track everyone’s position during the dynamic phases of the activity.

The Survivor Game

Set up a corridor or passage through which the children must run. A visually impaired child may complete the course independently using their cane or with the support of a guide. Position one child outside the corridor, holding a sound ball.

At the instructor’s signal, children start running, either one at a time or all together, trying to cross the corridor without being hit by the rolling sound ball.

The child outside must roll the ball along the ground to try and hit a runner. Any child who is hit joins the player outside the corridor and helps roll the ball in the following rounds.

A variation of the game is to place children on both sides of the corridor, increasing the challenge by requiring runners to pay attention to sound cues coming from both directions.

As in the previous game, each runner should say their name aloud while moving, so that visually impaired children can better locate and aim the ball toward the target.

Spiders & Flies

Select one child to play the role of the spider, who can move laterally along the center line of the field. The rest of the group will be the flies, who must try to escape the spider’s web.

The spider can catch the flies by tagging them. Once a fly is tagged, they becomes a spider and must join hands or link arms with the others, forming the growing “web”.

The spider (or spiders) must clap their hands or hold a sound ball to make their presence detectable by sound. Meanwhile, the flies should continuously repeat a word (for example, their name) to help others locate them through sound.

Children with visual impairments can participate as flies or spiders, accompanied by a guide who ensures safe movement and helps prevent collisions with objects or other children.

The game continues until all the flies have been caught.