Thursday 17 June 2010

Play nice or play fair?

My daughter's school had a tea party for the classes from Year 2 downwards plus junior siblings today (a small school so this only made about 35 children!). As chair of the PTA I took on the tea side but let another mum organise the pass the parcel. 



She decided to do a parcel for each gender group based upon the class sizes and not counting the siblings and new intake. This may have worked if some people hadn't sent their children without paying for them!

In the end we had a parcel aimed at 17 boys when we had 23 and one for 10 girls when 12 turned up. It was quite hard work as the music stopper making sure the parcel stopped for different kids each time, though other parents asked previous winners to pass on to someone else. Once the girls' had completed theirs we got all the winners from the boys to move out of the circle. Even then of course we had some who couldn't win (including my 3 year old son!). 

At this point the lady who did the parcel (her son is 7.5) said well that's life. Myself on the other hand thought it was too unfair for children aged 3-7 to be only in a very small minority to have nothing especially with my son crying! So I gathered round all the "losers" and said don't worry when Father Christmas came to the school he didn't take all the presents home! 

I then raided the leftover Santa gifts from the last Christmas Fayre and gave the 7 children a little prize. Would you have done the same or would have let 1/6th of the kids be upset from losing out?

6 comments:

  1. Well done you, what a lovely thing to do x

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  2. Oh of course you had to do that! Thank goodness no one went home empty handed.

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  3. I'm totally on the other side on this, I HATE this "everyone has to win" culture.
    Some people win, some people lose and I think it's very important to teach children that.
    When I was a child not everyone got something when we played games like that, the winner got a prize and everyone else dealt with it.
    Rant over!

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  4. Livi I don't think everyone has to win all the time but it was just that a very small percentage didn't! If there are only a couple of prizes for first place then the majority lose and that's OK. As pass the parcel is not a reward for doing well but a game of chance giving everyone something is fairer.

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  5. I stand by my comment, although re reading it it sounded like an attack and it wasn't supposed to, just my opinion.

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  6. Not offended at all Livi when you put something on a public forum you should expect comments on both sides of an argument ;-)

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