Playing traditional games and helping

tradycyjny kubb - Bieg dla Neuronków

Traditional games at the sports events

As I have showed in my previous articles, traditional sports, games and plays can work great at various, even world-wide, sports events, such as the World Sport for All Games. You can read about that here (part I), here (part II) and here (part III).

However, they are also excellent for regional and local initiatives. As it has turned out, they can be a wonderful attraction, enriching the programs of extremely important initiatives, such as sports charity events.

Last year,  as Inspirowany Sportem (Inspired by Sport), I participated with my practical activities in the Charity Run of the Neuronietypowi Foundation. The aim of this event was raising money for daily operations of this Foundation.

Inspirowany sportem
Inspirowany Sportem – Inspired by Sport 🙂

The Neuronietypowi Foundation

The Neuronietypowi Foundation is a great organization with the main goal to help children with various difficulties, such as prematurity, autism, genetic syndromes, intellectual disabilities and many others, in a multidimensional way.

This organization helps not only their pupils, but also their families – the most important people for these children.

Thanks to their activities, these families and their children find meaning in their lives and are simply becoming happier.

You can read more about the activities of this organization on their website http://neuronietypowi.org (it is in Polish, but you can still familiarize yourself with their main idea).

Charity Run of the Foundation

The Charity Run for Neurons (that are called the Foundation’s pupils) is one of the largest initiatives, created by this organization. Every year, at the Brzostek Lake in Promno (a village in Greater Poland), in a beautiful, natural environment, many runners – the adults and children in various age categories – gather together to participate in the run (this year, due to pandemic situation, it was not possible).

They pay entry fees, buy special T-shirts and offer the other forms of organizational and financial help, supporting the Foundation.

Traditional games and activities as an additional attraction of the event

The program of this event also included many other attractions. I have decided to help, by offering (free of charge) my best which are activities from traditional games.

Everyone interested had a great opportunity to play, among others, the Swedish, throwing game – Kubb.

This is an interesting, simple and engaging game, basically consisting in throwing wooden batons (you can also use bean bags) at your opponent’s 5 blocks, trying to knock them over. The simplicity of this game has made many people try it. Especially children was having a lot of fun from playing it.

kubb3 - bieg dla Neuronków
Positive emotions, while playing kubb
Inspirowany sportem - gra w kubba
Inspirowany sportem (Inspired by Sport) “in action” 🙂

Another game was croquet. This is not cricket – it is an old, gentry game where you use wooden, hammer-shaped sticks to hit balls through the small gates. Despite the rather difficult surface, children enjoyed this game and some of them were coming back to play it many times.

tradycyjny krokiet - Bieg dla Neuronków
Croquet – an additional attraction of the Charity Run
krokiet2 - bieg dla Neuronków
krokiet - bieg dla Neuronków

As always, tug-of-war turned out to be a genuine attraction for younger and older children. In the past an Olympic sport (1900-1920), until today it gives joy, derived from a simple form of physical activity and competition. There is always a lot of laugh with this game and that is all about that.

Tug-of-war – always a great attraction for children

Children were also playing a very interesting, throwing gameboccia (I will be writing about this game more in a separated article later).

sporty tradycyjne - boccia
A set of boccia – ready for playing

Helping and having a lot of fun – these are traditional games in practice

The involvement of children and their parents in traditional games during a charity sports event has once again showed how valuable these games are.

They give a lot of fun and joy from participation in simple, physical activities and, at the same time, in this case, they have helped to make a very important, charity event more attractive and successful.

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