Benefit of learning through play

Benefits, Ideas, And Tips For Families

We all know kids love to explore and play, but are some ways of playing better than others when it comes to learning through play? How is this style of learning different from regular child’s play?

Our experts at HOMER have compiled a comprehensive list of simple ways to get started with learning through play, plus tips to ensure your child thrives while they engage in various styles of play.

Let’s discover what learning through play means, what the benefits are, and how you can easily implement this valuable learning style at home.

What Is Learning Through Play?

While playtime might sometimes come across as unstructured or frivolous, it’s actually an important part of your child’s development and teaches them valuable life skills.

From playing with blocks to learning about balance and determining which shapes fit together to recognizing letters more easily, engaging in play can teach your child a lot about the world around them.

The many benefits of learning through play include:

Improving communication skills
Developing problem-solving abilities
Teaching conflict resolution
Nurturing creativity
Encourages relationship-building
Promoting independence
Making meaningful discoveries about the world around them
Motivating exploration

Academic Learning Vs. Play-Based Learning

Academics are the main focus of many early childhood learning programs. With these, teachers develop structured curriculums to help kids learn the alphabet, numbers, colors, shapes, and more.

This means that the adults are the ones who determine the process of learning, timelines, objectives (i.e., learning colors, letters, etc.), and everything else in-between. On the other hand, learning through play involves more child-directed activities.

While learning-through-play experiences can foster numeracy and literacy, they also help children grow holistically. This includes building their confidence, encouraging them to be naturally inquisitive, and furthering their social-emotional development.

Now that you know a bit more about the idea behind learning through play, let’s take a look at the benefits of this learning approach.

Key Benefits Of Playtime

Play Is Fun

When you see kids playing, their smiles and laughter can be infectious. That’s because playing is fun!

Not only does it provide a healthy endorphin release, but it also allows children to think creatively and use their imaginations to go to pretend lands, become different characters, and develop critical thinking skills.

Play Encourages Social Interaction

While there’s nothing wrong with allowing children to play by themselves (in fact, it’s encouraged), there’s something special that happens when kids play together.

They get to communicate their unique ideas to others and listen to other people’s perspectives. In addition, they learn other important social skills, like compromising, teamwork, and so much more.

As they play with others, children have opportunities to work through the challenges and frustrations that may occur.

For example, your child might express things like:

Why can’t I go first? Tom always gets the first go, and that’s not fair.
Skipping is so hard. Everyone else seems to be better than me.
Sarah wants to do it her way, but I have good ideas, too.

By learning how to work through these frustrations and problem-solve with others, your child develops the skills they need to build happy, healthy, and meaningful relationships.

Play Actively Engages Kids

Depending on the activity, children get the chance to touch, hear, smell, or mold objects they’re using during play. They get to practice skills they’ve learned, develop new ones, test out various possibilities, or even discover new challenges.

This combination of using their senses, stretching their minds, and having physical engagement with the activity in front of them helps children learn and develop.

As a result of such interactions, children get the chance to make sense of the world around them.

Important Elements Of Learning Through Play

For playing to actually have the benefits mentioned above, there are a few key elements that need to be present. Let’s take a look.

1) Enjoyment

This is probably the most obvious point on our list and reiterates what we mentioned above. But the reason kids love to play is that it’s fun! That’s why play needs to be an enjoyable experience for them.

Of course, there will inevitably be disagreements here and there or challenges to overcome, but overall, children should find what they’re doing pleasurable.

2) Flexibility

Too often, adults get fixated on structured learning and reaching specific outcomes. While there’s nothing wrong with having objectives in mind before starting to play, it’s also essential to be flexible.

This means allowing kids the freedom to explore and discover through their activities.

For example, if, during a painting activity the goal was to teach your child that when they mix their blue and yellow paint, they get green, don’t be upset when they mix in red instead of blue by mistake. Now, they’ve discovered how to make orange!

3) Children Leading

Sometimes, when we as adults initiate an activity, we want to lead our children through it. This is because we often feel that we know what’s best.

There’s nothing wrong with helping our kids figure some things out, but it’s also exciting to see them use their own minds to tackle a particular obstacle they’re facing. Try to give your child the opportunity to lead — let them decide how they’ll play and even for how long.

You can then focus on making sure that everyone involved stays safe (this is especially important if the activity involves sharp objects like scissors) and offer suggestions as needed.

Stages Of Play

Learning through play comes in many forms and stages that will carry your child through their developmental years.

Starting with unoccupied play, this stage usually begins between birth and 3 months of age when children start to learn about their bodies and the simple pleasures of kicking their legs.

Solitary play is the next recognizable stage. You might notice your child using their focus to play alone with toys and their organizational skills to make sense of the activities they engage in. Playing alone is completely normal and necessary for development.

In onlooker play, your child may start to observe other children playing. Their brain is busy learning about how to interact with others.

Similarly, in parallel play, your child might play their own game or activity (like PlayDoh or cars) next to another child who is also playing — they’re playing separately, together.

When your child is ready, they’ll begin to engage in associative play. Here, your child gets to put the social skills they’ve been learning into practice by interacting with others. This might look like sharing materials for a craft project or building structures out of blocks together.

Finally, cooperative play is all about sharing resources and working together to achieve a common goal. This stage of play involves utilizing social skills and establishing rules, which can involve healthy conflict resolution and negotiation skills.

It’s important to note that the stages of play should be used as a guide and not hard-and-fast rules. Just because your child has ‘aged out’ of the solitary play stage doesn’t mean they won’t still enjoy it from time to time as they grow up.

Learning through play is about the engagement and enjoyment your child will experience in the moment rather than aiming for a particular end result — just enjoy the process!

Learning Through Play: Ideas By Type

There are many different ways your child can learn through play. We’ve compiled a list of ideas to get you started!

We’ve divided these ideas into categories based on different types of play, but remember they aren’t mutually exclusive — it’s possible to engage in multiple types of play at once.

These play ideas are great for children playing alone, with an adult, or with other children. It all depends on your child’s needs and what they enjoy!

Physical Play

Physical play involves developing motor skills and focuses on moving your body. Any activity that involves running, jumping, climbing, crawling, or practicing balance counts as physical play!

Try incorporating ball games, chasing balloons or bubbles, dancing to music, or creating an obstacle course in the backyard to encourage physical play among children.

Language Play

Children are developing their language skills every day, so encouraging language play is a fun way to build on what they’re learning.

Language play should begin with verbal play, such as riddles, rhyming games, and making up stories. Then you can move on to literacy-based language play, like what we offer at HOMER.

We’ve compiled lists of our favorite writing and spelling games to help you get started enjoying language play! Our Explore Letters Kit is another way to support your child as they develop their literacy and language skills through play.

From developing their imagination to fostering their early writing skills, our Explore Letters Kit acts as the perfect supplement to language play!

Exploratory Play

Children are inherently little explorers, so it’s no surprise that a key type of play is exploratory in nature! This play style is all about your child using their senses to learn about the world around them.

This can be as simple as playing with mud, making slime, creating figures out of PlayDoh, finger painting, or even playing with different textures of food (think squishy pasta versus hard potatoes).

Exploring outdoors with adult supervision is another simple way to get started.

Constructive Play

Constructive play gives children the opportunity to utilize their imagination, fine motor skills, and creativity.

It also provides an outlet for self-expression and teaches children that they can bring the pictures in their minds into reality!

Try drawing pictures with chalk on the sidewalk, building structures out of blocks, creating sock puppets, and using open-ended art materials such as paints, pencils, and paper to see what your child feels like creating.

Fantasy Play

Fantasy play (also called role-playing or imaginative play) is a fantastic way for your child to act out ideas they see in the world as well as make-believe scenarios they create all by themselves.

By incorporating costumes or pieces of material, figurines, puppets, and toy animals, children are free to explore and imagine without fear of judgment.

Fantasy play allows them to learn about various occupations such as doctors and firefighters, societal roles such as parents and caregivers, and fantasy scenarios such as adventures with superheroes and villains.

The possibilities are endless when it comes to fantasy play!

Social Play

Social play involves playing with others. This may be peers their own age, younger siblings, or older adults. It’s important for your child to learn to play with a variety of people and adapt to the needs of others.

This type of play is usually practiced during an additional style of play. For example, while engaging in make-believe play about cooking food or while playing a game of tag, your child will be practicing their social skills along the way.

Utilizing skills such as communication, negotiation, problem-solving, and cooperation is crucial in social play. As children learn and practice these skills, their ability to play in social settings will improve.

Our Explore Feelings Kit can help your child explore these new social skills in a fun, safe way! This specially designed kit provides your child with activities to foster their social-emotional skill development and promotes positive interactions with others.

Challenges Of Integrating Learning Through Play

While the benefits of learning through play are numerous, this approach isn’t without its challenges.

Lack Of Understanding

When parents or guardians don’t understand the value of learning through play, they are not likely to encourage their children to participate in it.

Many adults still view playtime for children as having no connection with learning academic concepts. Instead, play is seen as frivolous and taking away time from “real learning. ”

While some believe that the traditional way of learning (i.e., placing a worksheet in front of a child and evaluating their understanding) is the best and only way to teach children, this isn’t true.

When children play with blocks, paint, do puzzles, or dress up in costumes, they are building a solid foundation for learning shapes and colors, creative thinking, and many other important concepts.

If play is not encouraged, children may actually lose out on critical skill development.

School Days Without Time For Independent Play

During the week, our children spend many of their waking hours at daycare, preschool, or school. But, unfortunately, many schools don’t have enough time in the day to allow for independent play, aside from recess.

In an ideal world, teachers would be trained in how to instill playful learning into the curriculum, but most of the time this is not a child’s school-day experience. That means the home is the perfect place to create an environment friendly to learning through play.

If you’re short on time or unsure of how to create a lineup of appropriate games or activities, our Learn & Play app is the perfect solution!

Designed for children up to three years old, this app is packed with lots of games, stories, and songs to help build a strong foundation for many important skills, such as knowing colors, shapes, the ABCs, and more.

Now that we’ve emphasized the importance of learning through play and discussed some of its challenges, let’s take a look at a few quick tips for making the most of this time!

Quick Tips For Learning Through Play

Show Interest

Showing genuine interest in your child’s play activities is a great way to encourage further positive play experiences.

Talking to your child about their play preferences, asking questions, and getting involved when your child wants you to join in can show your child that you’re interested in and supportive of their play efforts.

Playing together can also be great for your whole family! It can help build stronger relationships while your child is learning and having lots of fun.

Offer Support

You can set your child up for success in learning through play by offering support during challenging situations, such as difficulty joining in with groups.

Navigate these challenges together by intervening only when necessary, discussing your child’s feelings, and providing strategies to approach situations differently in the future, such as offering to share with others.

Follow Their Lead

When it comes to making learning through play a positive experience, it’s important not to push your child into activities they may not feel ready for.

For example, if you’ve noticed your child isn’t taking an interest in playing with other children just yet, that’s OK! They will begin to observe and eventually participate in activities with others when they feel ready.

It’s equally as important to let your child make their own decisions when it comes to the type of play activities they want to engage in. If your child enjoys exploring more than they enjoy fantasy play, let them explore.

Also, remember that children’s interests change. For instance, today, they may take an interest in painting and want to do it the whole day. Then, next weekend, they may be done with painting and want to build a fort underneath the coffee table.

So, don’t worry too much if your young learner isn’t showing interest in particular activities. The interest can develop over time. In the meantime, give them the freedom to explore what they love right now.

Give Your Child A Dedicated Space

Children know how to make a freshly cleaned room look like a tornado just hit it! As a parent, it can be frustrating to let your child continue playing and having fun while watching your home being turned upside down.

To help, designate a specific room or space (e.g., a corner in the living room or outside) for your child to play in. Then, let them play and explore whatever activities they wish within that space. They can draw, do a puzzle, dress up, or even build that fort!

Having a play environment or a dedicated space where your child is free to use their imagination is a great way for them to learn and develop new skill sets.

Learn Through Play With HOMER

Learning through play is an important part of your child’s skill development and can encourage creativity and imagination as well as learning.

By implementing the play ideas above — from language play to fantasy play and everything in-between — your child will be having so much fun they won’t even realize they’re learning valuable lessons along the way!

The Learn with Sesame Street app is an effective tool that helps kids learn and develop their social and emotional skills. With the help of their Sesame Street friends, kids learn how to express their emotions, empathize with others, and create healthy relationships. Explore the Learn with Sesame Street app today!

Happy playing!

Author

The Benefits of Learning Through Play

In Activities by Educational PlaycareMay 31, 2018

Research shows that learning through play is an important part of a child’s development. Though ensuring your child has enough play time is a great benefit to families to allow their children to release some extra energy, a child begins to find out who they are through play, even during infancy. Even early in development, a child’s mind is expanding just by looking at their environment and taking in their surroundings.

Through play and with the use of educational toys, children learn many different skills they will need in their life such as:

Problem solving and learning cause and effect
Learning how to play with others through compromise, conflict resolution and sharing
Development of fine and gross motor skills
Nurturing their creativity and imagination
Discovering their independence and positive self-esteem

Children can start benefiting from educational toys as early as one month old. For young infants, sensory play will help stimulate your child’s senses. Mobiles, soothers and infant play gyms are great first toys for children as they focus on sensory play through sound, sight and touch. As your child continues to grow and develops hand-eye coordination, families can begin introducing toys that encourage more interaction such as portable toys which will continue to inspire visual and hearing senses with flashing lights and different sounds.

As your child gets older, introducing age appropriate toys will help them continue to learn and hit their milestones. Problem solving toys such as stackers or blocks will help your children work through conflicts and develop an understanding of cause and effect. These types of educational toys will also help them build confidence once they’ve learned how a toy works after trial and error. As your child becomes more mobile, you can introduce walkers to help teach them about coordination and balance. You can also introduce numbers by counting your child’s steps.

For older children two years or older, introducing toys that promote physical play. When they are old enough to use a tricycle, bike or roller-skates, ensure your child understands the safety concerns that comes with these toys and incorporate wearing a helmet and/or other protective gear in the process of using these toys. Families can continue to promote creativity and problem-solving skills by giving your children more complex building sets. Children will also become familiar with how words they hear look on the pages by families spending time reading together.

Learning through play doesn’t stop in the house or in the classroom. The importance of outdoor play for young children cannot be overstated. That’s why we suggest families bring learning to the great outdoors! Go on a walk and gather nature objects such as sticks, leaves, etc. to use in art projects later. Families can simply just enjoy the outdoors with some fun water play or bringing a blanket and some toys outside to enjoy.

Incorporating play in your child’s day can be both fun and beneficial to their growth. What toys do your children love that help promote learning and growth?

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Game learning - Tutors Association Blog

Game is not only fun for children or a way to have a good time. With its help, you can also learn something new, master science, memorize complex concepts. Playful learning makes learning easier not only for toddlers, but also for high school students and even adults. And most importantly, using the game as a teaching method is not difficult and realistic at home.

A bit about learning through games

Learning is much easier and more enjoyable in the game. Photo source

Interestingly, the game has been used as a learning element since ancient times. For example, in ancient Greece, these were sports competitions, competitions in music, literature and the ability to argue. Competitions, discussions and some other elements of game learning have been and are used in almost every educational institution from ancient times to the present day.

However, game learning as a separate method emerged quite recently - in the second half of the 20th century. Today it is developing rapidly, but so far it is not used everywhere. But if your child's educational institution does not use game teaching methods or is used to a limited extent, this does not mean at all that you cannot use them on your own. The game can significantly facilitate the acquisition of new knowledge and skills for a child of any age and even an adult, increase interest in learning. In contrast to the traditional form of learning, gaming has the following advantages:

Light and interesting shape. The game has an exciting, understandable and attractive format for everyone. There is no strict discipline, and participants have more freedom of action than in alternative learning situations.
Increased participant activation. It is easier to get interested in a game, it is easier to attract participants to it and it is easier to get the desired result from them. After all, emotional, mental, physical and other resources are involved in its process.
Additional motivation. With the help of the game format, you can not only teach, but also motivate to study, as well as get the child to show initiative, perseverance, creativity and purposefulness.
Ease of transfer and assimilation of knowledge. A feature of the game is the fact that participants must enter it voluntarily. Due to this, the influence of psychological defenses that prevent understanding and accepting new information, mastering new skills and abilities is reduced.
Versatile. The game is a great way to explain what is not very clear, give new information, teach something, as well as entertain yourself and the child, learn to interact, unlock potential, etc.

When studying with your child or trying to learn something on your own, feel free to translate learning into a game format. To do this, it is important to take into account age and show a lot of interest and a little creativity.

Play-based learning for preschoolers

At preschool age, play is the main form of activity. The child plays in the kindergarten with other children and the teacher, at home with his parents and on his own. And in the course of this game it is very easy to teach the kid the basic concepts (for example, colors, shapes, numbers, letters) and prepare him for school.

Educational games for preschoolers can be very diverse. It all depends on the imagination and desires of the parents, on the specific knowledge that you want to give to the child. Here are some ideas and tips:

For very young children (from 1.5-2 years old) it is advisable to combine the usual game with the presentation of new information. For example, when assembling a pyramid, stacking cubes, rolling cars, etc., you can name the child the colors of the elements, their shape, and number them. It is important that such games and naming be systematic. In this case, the child will remember the new information quite quickly.
Educational toys. Recently, children's stores have a large number of such toys, designed for a certain age. For children, they are very useful, as they allow the development of various skills (fine motor skills, size discrimination, etc.) and attractive, as they are developed taking into account child psychology and age characteristics.
For older preschoolers (from approx. 5 years old) a "growth scale" can be introduced. On this scale, the child will independently mark his successes and achievements, gradually moving up like a ladder. For example, a scale related to the study of the alphabet may have the following division steps: familiarity with letters, partial reproduction of the alphabet, complete reproduction of the alphabet, vowels, consonants, etc. The child can move along this scale some figure that symbolizes him. It’s good if the baby will receive a pleasant reinforcement for reaching a new level - a candy, a small toy, or just praise.
It is easy to learn the rules of the road while playing, to acquaint the child with professions and their content. Various thematic sets, picture books, large-scale pictures depicting a road with crossroads and road signs, etc. will help with this. To do this, it is enough to explain to the child during the game what a particular sign means, what a representative of a particular profession does.
Voluntary memorization is not yet sufficiently developed in preschool children. If you want the child to remember something, then present it in a playful way. For example, a baby will remember a list of some products very well and easily if you ask him to imagine that he is going to the store and these products need to be bought.

This is only a small part of the game elements. Parents can get creative and come up with their own games. The main thing to remember is that the baby should be interested, and the learning moments should be only an additional part for the kids of this age.

Children's curiosity knows no bounds. Point her in the right direction! Photo source

Game teaching for children of primary school age

When a child enters school, the nature of learning games should also change. They become more serious, take on a different content, i. aimed at the development of the school curriculum and to help in learning. There are practically no restrictions here, and the form of the game will depend on the learning goals and the adult's imagination. Here are some examples of game learning for children aged 7 to 13 years.

Puppet shows. With their help, you can teach a student to create (making dolls and scenery), study a literary work (staging a book), play with relationships between people (for example, between a teacher and students at school).

One of the best methods of learning through games. Photo source

Interactive exhibitions, thematic walks. Many museums, galleries, theaters, etc. conduct special educational programs for children. With their help, students can not only learn a lot of new things, but also visually see what they are going through at school.
Visibility. It is very important for the assimilation of knowledge, especially at primary school age. It is very effective to study mathematics with the help of various objects (apples, sweets, toys, etc.), to master reading while playing (for example, not just make a child read a story, but do it to dolls, younger siblings or even adults) . For a better assimilation of spatial relationships, it is very useful to draw plans and diagrams with the child. For example, the game "Treasure". The child is invited to play a game and hide/find some treasure. To do this, the student must first draw a plan of the house, yard, school, etc. with the help of an adult. And then the adult hides the “treasure”, marks its place on the plan, and the child looks for it. With the help of this game, you can study spatial relationships, prepositions, symbols, teach how to draw diagrams and navigate in them.
Study of foreign languages. In order for the child to better memorize new words, you can play small scenes. For example, buying a ticket at the ticket office of the station, indicating the direction, taking the right book from the library, etc. Dialogue should be conducted in a foreign language.
Travel games. Most effective towards the end of elementary school and high school as it requires initiative and imagination. In such games, children are invited to transform into geographers, geologists, zoologists, etc. The tasks of the game are the study of nature, geography, continents, etc. The child needs to independently find information about a country or continent, describe an animal or place, keep a diary of meteorological and other observations, etc. Also, such games develop initiative, independence, observation.

Children of primary and secondary school age need visualization in teaching. That is why it will be much easier and more interesting for them to study school material if they are given the opportunity for dramatizations and thematic walks, the opportunity to do something on their own and during the game. Story and role-playing games are good for school tasks. Just try to present information that is difficult for a child in a playful way, and success will not be long in coming.

Play-based learning for high school students and adults

High school students, students and adults can also use the game elements to easily learn knowledge and skills. However, games need to be more challenging to be interesting. Also, when modeling a learning game for this age category, one should take into account:

Participants' independence. During the game, a student or an adult must independently find a solution to the problem. Those. everything from the search for sources to the formation of the final result must be done by the participant himself.
Logic. Elements of the educational game should be well and logically interconnected, as close as possible to real life. As a rule, verbal-logical thinking already predominates at this age, and it is very important to take this into account. For example, if the game is aimed at memorization, then the concepts should be connected by logical associations. And if a decision is to be made, then it is necessary to foresee the logical consequences of such a decision.
Visibility. With age and a change in the leading type of thinking, this criterion continues to be very important. Thematic exhibitions and evenings, dramatization of complex literary works, acting out dialogues, scenes and events (including in a foreign language), etc. will be very useful for a person of any age.

Play is a great help at any age. Photo source

Play is a unique form of activity that allows you to relax and unwind while gaining new knowledge. If traditional teaching methods do not give the desired effect, then show a bit of imagination, move away from the usual and boring assimilation of knowledge and make it exciting and useful.

Source of title picture

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Advantages of the game method

The objectives of the game are more degrees are consistent with practical the needs of the students. This form of organization of the educational process removes the contradiction between the abstract the nature of the subject and the real the nature of professional activity, systemic nature of the knowledge and their belonging to different disciplines.
The method allows combine a wide range of issues and their depth of understanding.
game form corresponds to the logic of activity, includes a moment of social interaction, prepares for professional communication.
Game Component promotes greater engagement trainees.
business game saturated with feedback, and more meaningful compared to the applied in traditional methods.
The game is formed installations of professional activity, easier to overcome stereotypes, self-assessment is corrected.
Traditional methods suggest dominance intellectual sphere, the game manifests itself the whole personality.
Method provokes inclusion of reflective processes, provides an opportunity to interpret comprehension of the obtained results.

An experience, obtained in the game, it may even be more productive than acquired in a professional activities. This happens for several reasons. Business games allow increase the scope of reality, visualize the consequences decisions made, enable check alternative solutions. Information used by a person in reality, incomplete, inaccurate. In Game he is given, though incomplete, but accurate information that enhances confidence in the results and stimulates the process of acceptance responsibility. Considered benefits determined success application of this method in educational process.

Necessary pay attention to the presence of two aspects of management: instrumental and emotional-role, to consider their specifics at each stage conducting a business game. Supervisor games, as a rule, "launches" it, sets goals, introduces participants with its description, participates in distribution of roles, represents in order of the participants necessary information. important role in the creation game atmosphere. Game events must be separated from reality help of a special organization of space game interaction, specific communication style. Head directs their efforts to refine understanding participants in the game situation. He must encourage formalization of every action pseudo real documents (for example, the absence of the player is explained by the agenda from the military office). If synchronicity is broken in the work of groups, it is better to introduce some new condition (e.g. trip part employees on business trips, vacations and etc.). If the host found a deficiency knowledge of the players on emerging issues, it can introduce the situation of referring to competent professionals for consultations. This arrangement of events supports the game plan.

Subject attention of the leader should be creating game motivation, providing optimal dynamics of interpersonal relations. It is important to support certain level of competitive motivation among the participants in the game so that it stimulate activity, not provoked the presentation itself.

At team building is necessary consider interpersonal relationships formed in the group. For achievement cooperation is better to be in a team observed positive interpersonal relations. Some of the leaders group building use data sociometry. At the same time, it should be prevented transferring the goal of the task to group interrupt. American social psychologist Jennings described a phenomenon he called the transformation social group in the "psychological". In the "psychological" group, everyone members are bound by mutual sympathy, feel protected, feel psychological comfort and most importantly focus on living together in a group rather than problem solving. That's why this group aims to achieve consent, not results. Decisions are not well thought out and are discussed. Often uncritically offers of high status are accepted game participants. Leaders have excess of leadership claims. That's why it is important to design the game in such a way that influence of different players on the decision approached equal. There are data showing that it is easier to accept solutions in a small group with odd the number of participants.

Important most games feature role interaction. Roles structure the group. It means assigning to each participant of the game certain position in the group prescribed functions. Typically, the role is understood not only as a sum of functions, but also samples behavior.