The Interaction Game

Field Trips for All of Us: Transformative Adventures for Children and Their Adults

Note: For now, this blog is a serialization of a book titled Explorations in Ecology for Children and Their Adults. Here is the preface. The first field trip is Taking Education Outside.

The Interaction Game is one of my all-time favorite activities for young people because they love it, and because it introduces one of the most important ideas for our collective future! The prevailing worldview held by us folks of the global north is that the world is composed of separate things. The process of looking at things as composed of independent parts and describing them in terms of the functioning of each, is called analysis or analytic reductionism. This way of thinking is behind the design of computer systems, other mechanical systems, advances in modern medicine from antibiotics to micro-surgery, and the structure of the social institutions of the industrial north. It is also behind ongoing climate change, ecosystem degradation, and the collapse of our social systems. Land-based people and modern scientists, from quantum mechanics to ecologists, agree that while looking at the world as a bunch of separate things can be useful, it is always important to remember that our world emerges from interactions and relationships between things. In this field trip, we’ll introduce and explore the nature of interactions. In later trips, we’ll expand and develop this central idea further.

Activity

I use this activity to help support children learning about human and ecosystem interactions. Human interactions are a good start as we all are very familiar with them. I usually introduce this game by suggesting we play a game that is like charades. 

Would you like to play a game that is like charades? Two of you will act out an interaction, and the rest will guess what is happening.

Next, I ask the children what they think an interaction is. Often kids will come up with examples, and if they don’t, I’ll give an example like a squirrel eating an acorn.  After we have some examples, I might ask what those examples have in common. Sometimes I’ll also ask them to dissect the word and consider its parts: inter and act. What words come to mind that also include those parts? Intersection, international, interlace. Inter means between. An interaction is an action between two people, beings, or things. An event where one does something, and another does something back. 

I’ve played this game with groups of two to ten. If it’s just one other person and me, we’ll act out interactions with the forest as our audience. If there are three of us, the children act out interactions and I guess. If there are four or more of us, we rotate through different pairs acting with others guessing.

Human Interactions: Many of our daily interactions are with other people.

I introduce this form of the game by saying that one type of interaction is between two or more people. For example, two people saying hello to each other.

• Ask for volunteers to act out two people saying hello.

• Ask kids to act out the above interaction with movement instead of words. 

• Ask them to think up an interaction of their own and act it out. 

If the kids struggle with examples, throw out some ideas like paying a cashier, playing catch, or rocking a baby. 

• Ask the group what interaction they enjoyed acting out or seeing acted out. If needed, ask the group to consider the examples they acted out and what they have in common. Ask them if they remember what the parts of the word mean. What words come to mind that also include those parts? 

Humans also interact with mechanical and electrical devices. This is the topic of the next layer of the interaction game.

Non-human Ecosystem Interactions: Non-humans also interact in ecosystems.

This layer of the game includes two parts: (a) looking for interactions between organisms or between organisms and abiotic (i.e., non-living) aspects of their environment, and (b) acting out those interactions in groups of two or more with others guessing the participants in, and nature of, the interaction. For example, two children might role-play an interaction between a squirrel and an oak tree with the squirrel picking an acorn from the tree and eating it. The game has evolved to include the use of props (e.g., oak branches and acorns) and audience members able to guess about the participants in the interaction (e.g., are you an oak tree?) on the way to describing the interaction fully (e.g., you’re an oak tree and you’re a squirrel eating an acorn from the oak tree). 

• To play this version of the interaction game, I ask folks to look for interactions in their local ecosystem. I first ask them to think of and describe interactions they’ve observed before. If they don’t come up with any, I’ll list some examples: a squirrel eating an acorn, a bird pooping on the soil (signs of an interaction count too!), or a lizard doing push-ups. We’ll then wander our environment looking for interactions to act out.

• As we wander, I’ll ask them to act out interactions they’ve observed or seen evidence of. I’m often asked to join in acting out an interaction. If this happens for you, I encourage you to join! When I am, I try and use the opportunity to up the ante by introducing a new interaction we haven’t discussed or seen before. When kids are acting out interactions, I coach their acting by reminding them to move or shape themselves like the being or abiotic environmental feature (e.g., I’ve seen kids act out being lichen growing on a rock) they’re playing. While we’re playing, I also talk with children about how the forest is a vast dance of interactions and relationships.

• Once a group has had a lot of experience with the interaction game, I encourage them to enact a sequence of interactions that move nutrients from the soil and return nutrients to the soil. I leave the specific interactions up to them.  Typical interaction cycles might include a plant growing from soil, a deer eating that grass, a big cat eating the deer, and then defecating on the soil.

• Again, ask the group, “How are the different types of interactions we’ve acted out different?” “How are they the same? Listen carefully to their answers. 

Next time you find yourself in nature with children, or if your inner child glows strong within you while you’re out in nature with your friends, I encourage you to play the interaction game. It’s fun! It will grow their and your connection with nature and it will help us all remember that we are all caught up in a dance of interdependence here on planet Earth!

By participating in the pretending/modeling involved in all versions of this game, all kids gain valuable visceral knowledge of what interactions are. With kids ages eight and up I like to engage them in making sense of the differences between the various types of interactions they have enacted.

Nature Science: Ecosystem interactions are different from mechanical interactions. 

External forces determine the actions of machines following mechanistic logic: If A happens externally then respond with action  B. My dear friend David Braden points out that the interactions between living beings follow a very different logic. “Each individual organism is going about its individual efforts to be fed, safe, and loved.” “The participating organisms create the pattern of interactions and that pattern is the context within which the participants can achieve their goals (or not). A pattern of interactions in which more individuals achieve their goals is a better pattern for everyone (more diverse, resilient, and productive).” Every action any of us takes, impacts us all. As David says, this dance is a web of interactions that includes many mutually beneficial relationships and cyclical pathways through which nutrients and energy are recycled. This is the big idea behind how natural systems work and it is key to both understanding natural systems and to designing educational, agricultural, and other systems that work more like forests and less like factories. I believe understanding this idea is key to supporting our children becoming stewards of the Earth.

Educational Tip: Having learners enact processes is a powerful way to support learning.

Left on their own (a practice I highly recommend), most children between the ages of 2-10 love to play pretend. Older children and adults also often enjoy acting and games like charades that incorporate acting. Think of it like improv: say “yes, and…” to encourage cooperation and expand the learning process. Acting out different kinds of processes requires all of us to think more carefully about those processes, helps us embody big ideas, and gives activity guides (that’s you) lots of opportunities to ask questions and highlight features that enrich and expand learners' thinking.

We will revisit and expand upon the idea of interactions in many later field trips.