Summary

Game type: 'Animal Noises' (animal game), 'The Sentence Game' (word game)
Alternative types: team games

Typed descriptions of the animal game 'Animal Noises' written by 11 year old Elaine Boyle and the word game 'The Sentence Game' composed by Phillip Barden, students at Errol Street Primary School, for Dr Dorothy Howard on 25 August 1954. It has been assumed that Dr Howard typed these versions of the original descriptions at a later date. To play, Boyle writes that two teams of equal numbers are established and located in separate rooms. She states that a captain allocates an animal noise to each member of one team before informing the opposing team players of a particular animal sound to listen for. On hearing their particular noise, Boyle explains that the opposing team members must try and locate the child responsible for the call.

Barden describes 'The Sentence Game' as a game suitable for girls and boys, which is played in a field year round. To begin, he writes that players form two teams. One team develops a sentence with each player selecting one word from the phrase before hiding. The other team search for the hidden players, making note of each word as they locate their opponents. Barden explains that once all hidden players have been found, the team must try and recreate the original sentence.

One of a collection of letters describing a children's game written to children's Folklorist Dorothy Howard between 1954 and 1955. Dr Howard came to Australia in 1954-55 as an American Fulbright scholar to study Australian children's folklore. She travelled across Australia for 10 months collecting children's playground rhymes, games, play artefacts, etc. This letter, together with the other original fieldwork collected by Dr Howard during this period, is preserved in the Dorothy Howard Collection manuscript files, part of the Australian Children's Folklore Collection (ACFC), Archive Series 3. The ACFC is an extensive collection documenting children's folklore and related research.

Physical Description

Typed game descriptions in black ink on paper. Features text on one side of page only.

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