In PHQP 0010_The Benefits Of Mixed-Age Groups, Jeff champions the developmental perks of diverse age play. In this Playvolution HQ Podcast episode, we discuss classic kid games, explore how mixed-age groups boost learning and calm chaos, touch on Vygotsky’s ZPD and MKO, and dig into jungle gym history. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0010 The Benefits Of Mixed-Age Groups Episode Notes Classic Kid Games Lilian G. Katz | The Benefits of Mixed-Age Grouping The Case for Mixed-Age Grouping in Early Education Babies And Beyond | Managing Mixed-Age Groups Benefits and Challenges Of Mixed-Age Preschool Mixed-Age Groups in Early Childhood Education The Benefits Of Mixed-Age Groups Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ Podcast. I'm Jeff Johnson. Thanks for for pushing play. On with the show. So, first up, the face slap game. I saw this at a bus stop the other day while I was out walking my pup Gigi in the morning. A couple boys, 8, 10, 11, 12 years old, are standing around. There's three of them. They're playing the face slap game, which is, basically, here's how you play. You take turns slapping your buddy in the face. And the slapper is trying to, you know, make it hurt when they slap their buddy in the face. And the slapee, in receiving the slap, is trying to be stoic and suck it up. And the way this game goes is you just take turns slapping each other in the face, and it hurts. And, for some reason, it's fun when you're a boy of that age. I was happy to see this game being played in 2025 because I played it hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles away decades earlier in the 70s and 80s. So, this is kind of a pervasive thing. This is something little boys do when they get together. And it's a game. It's play because it's self-chosen. It's self-selected. If it was somebody just walking up and slapping somebody, it would be a violent act. But because these dudes chose to engage in this activity, hey, guys, let's slap each other. There's that consent there, which makes it a playful act. So that, again, there's that playful aggression that we've talked about in past episodes. And speaking of play and children's games, that kind of leads us into topic one for this episode, almost if it was planned that way. Topic one is classic kids' games. So on the Playvolution HQ website, years ago, I started a little corner of the site to collect these kinds of classic kids' games. And I got some of them up there, and then I got distracted by other things with the site. But now I'm getting back to adding these. And probably for that couple of years, I'm going to be adding a couple a week, probably, and then revamping the ones that have been there before. So I've added the face slap game to the list. The other day, I was out, and I saw a couple of kids playing what we used to call bat-back. A kid on each end of a field has got a baseball bat, and they're just taking turns batting the ball back to each other. Not a game that adults would probably organize, but it's something kids do. Also, recently, we saw kids playing a game called, we used to call it freeze. And one kid, usually a younger kid, was in charge. And every time they yelled, freeze, the older kids had to stop whatever they were doing. They had to just freeze there until they were unfrozen. And so there's like this 6-year-old, and she's commanding probably an 11-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl. And the boy's bouncing his basketball. And as soon as she yells, freeze, he has to freeze in mid-dribble. And then the ball kind of stops and rolls away. And she giggles gloriously. And he's trying to keep from smirking because he made this little kid laugh playing this silly game. So anyway, we're collecting these classic playground games. You know, kickball, dodgeball, all those kind of things. Cat's Cradle, the yardy things. And right now I've got a list of,
