In 2015, the Hungarian School Sport Federation’s (HSSF) TE IS (You Play) programme was selected by ISCA as one of 7 best practices to be transferred or upscaled through the MOVE Transfer programme. Now HSSF has launched a new book on their programme, which is still expanding across Hungary. HSSF gives us an update on You Play and the new NowUPlay! Game book.

ISCA’s MOVE Transfer gave our Federation the opportunity to launch a national campaign and network building project. To implement the aims set out by MOVE Transfer, we reinvented the TE IS programme in order to successfully engage new participants with the available resources. We have now concluded a new side project focusing on game-inventing, which is one component selected from the otherwise complex TE IS programme.

As a result, the Játssz TE IS! (NowUPlay!) tender call and campaign was born as part of ISCA’s MOVE Transfer project and included all those Hungarian primary and secondary schools who had not been involved in the TE IS programme before.

In this project the school teams have undertaken to create and implement physical activity-based games with as many peers as possible. During the program the teams went through a common learning process alongside the experiences, excitement and joyful moments. The whole process – to design and to try out the game, to give precise description of the rules, to involve and to motivate their peers, expanded their knowledge of self-esteem and their social relationships. Often these games activated the whole school community.

The 45 games created by students represent the immense value of the programme, so we decided to collect them in the “NowUPlay” Game Book. The book is designed with the important aspect in mind that children and youth shall be able to use it with their peers to organise extracurricular school activities. We also recommend all interested adults - teachers or parents - to get inspired by the games described by the children themselves.

The first chapters provide some useful instructions on how to start playing the games – for example, by involving others, creating roles, safety, etc. Then each game category has a short presentation that can help the selection.

The description of the games contain pictures and drawings and also the unique and creative messages from the team. In addition, at the end of the book, Readers will also be encouraged to create their own games.

To be able to continue this path, we would like to provide this tool and inspiration to as many children and students as possible, to gain and share experiences during this simple process which we call a “game”.

In the future, we are looking forward to addressing all schools in the country and encouraging them to continue to create their own games and then collect those into a second edition of the “NowUPlay” game book.

The basis of the project is a quite comprehensive methodology. In case other partners or experts are interested, we are open to share the content or discuss the possibilities of integrating certain elements into other projects.

Finally, if your promotional campaign allows, we would also encourage the readers to share similar games or game collections with us.

Currently the “NowUPlay” Book is available in Hungarian in the HSSF webshop for free.

Article and photos by the Hungarian School Sport Federation

See all of the photos from the NowUPlay Award Ceremonies (featuring interactive demonstrations from Hungarian sports personalities such as football freestyler Kitti Szasz).