It is difficult to ascertain what would be considered the first actual “sport.” Games have been played throughout the whole of humanity’s existence. However, when was the first time a game became elevated to a sport? Many would quickly point out the Ancient Greek Olympic Games of 776 BC as their example of the first sports since it featured a competition with rules and an organizing body. Most, if not all, events were competed as individuals, as opposed to team against team. However, there is evidence that sports were played far before the Olympic Games. According to the Encyclopedia Britannic ..read more

Stoolball is an early sport that originated in England, dating back to the 14th century. It is believed that milkmaids in Sussex and Kent played this game in their leisure time. The game was played on a field, and a stool was used as a target, similar to the wickets in cricket. The stool was placed on the ground, and the objective of the game was to hit it with a ball. The stool was defended by a batter who used a bittle or milking bowl (the game was also called bittleball) to strike the ball before it made contact with it. Stoolball was traditionally played on Easter Monday, a day off for mo ..read more

It all started with basketball. My school loves playing basketball, so I purposely enticed them with something they already loved. I had this idea of manipulating how many points someone scores when they make a basket to highlight the power structures of different government types. After playing and testing the initial prototype, the students loved it because it was an interactive way of experiencing the concepts of government systems. Playing with the concepts from Governments Basketball acted as a supercharger for understanding and comprehension mainly because it was a game, which inherently ..read more

I'm going to do something that will make my wife very happy. I'm going to admit that she was right all along. I've had good conferences in the past, but this one may have been the best, and it was due to one simple change. This was not a lecture but an activity that all the adults who attended participated in. The Sustainability Game was my presentation this year, and the game is versatile enough that it can be played in a classroom setting if need be. This was not a lecture with limited participation by the attendees. They played the game for at least half the time, and I gave them some conne ..read more

I had the distinct pleasure of hearing Michael’s stories in person through my Montessori training at St. Kate’s. They were flawless. He did not recite them; they were performed. Never a slip of the tongue and told at the right cadence to absorb every word. He also spoke at a volume that drew you into the story without straining to hear it. He was captivating, as any good storyteller should be. However, I didn’t fully appreciate his ability until I heard recordings of his stories. They were precisely the same! Not just close, they were identical. When we think of ancient bards, shamans, and sto ..read more

I am excited to announce that I will present "The Sustainability Game" at the 2024 AIMS conference on February 23rd and 24th. If you are attending the conference, I invite you to join me for the Sustainability Game workshop on Saturday, scheduled from 1:15 - 2:30 PM. If you haven't registered, you can do so here. Sustainability is a topic that needs to be better understood, especially globally. Two opposing viewpoints tend to dominate the conversation. On the one hand, some believe we need to extract as many resources as possible to make them cheaper for the marketplace, which keeps prices low ..read more

This blog post is part of the Play, Games, and Sport (What it Means to be Human) blog series. While writing the third part of the blog post, I noticed that I spent a good portion of the time defining what sport was before even talking about sports' significance to humanity and culture. I did not want to number this blog 2.5, but it essentially bridges the official second and third blog posts. If you type into Google "the difference between game and sport," you will not be impressed with the search results. I think this is an indication that the two terms are used synonymously when the fact is ..read more

Are you ready to update your lesson plan for teaching basketball to your students? Look no further than this blog post! We've made some exciting updates to the lesson plan, including the option for students to choose federation as their team and some helpful diagrams to make the lesson even clearer. But that's not all - we will explore the potential of our government's basketball game with other sports like soccer, kickball, baseball, and football to see if the concept works across the board. I already have a lesson plan for government hockey, which serves as a great introduction to team hocke ..read more

As we come to the end of another year, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude and thankfulness for your continued support and engagement with my content. Your readership, comments, and purchases have made it possible for me to continue creating meaningful educational resources and sharing them with the world. I especially want to thank everyone who has become a member of Montessori Physical Education. With unlimited access to every lesson plan as well as the video tutorials, I know your students will absolutely love the games you play with them. As a small token of my appreciation, I ..read more

We established in the previous article that there is an evolutionary advantage to play, so it is in our biology to play. However, somewhere down the line, early humans began to develop play that went past the informal skill-based play of other animals. They started engaging in far more complex play facilitated through enhanced communication of shared imagination. Over time, we would begin seeing formalized play. If the rules and context were shared from generation to generation, it could evolve into a cultural game. Like a meme, the game would introduce and reinforce the culture and system of ..read more