Free to use
The Play Library
Everything we have learned about play and happiness, gathered in one place and free to download. Take it into your classroom, your team, your living room. The only ask is that you use it.
Everything we have learned about play and happiness, gathered in one place and free to download. Take it into your classroom, your team, your living room. The only ask is that you use it.
We do not gate our best work behind a form. Below is Jared's Happiness Booklet, four full game collections we use and trust, and an index of more than 120 games for any room and any age. Download it, print it, share it.
"The 10 Habits of a Joyful Life and the Life Skills to Attain Them." Jared Hippler's 23-page magnum opus on happiness and mental health, distilled from two Peace Corps tours, a career in addiction therapy, and years of teaching play around the world.
Inside: the 10 daily habits with their action steps, the DOSE science of your four happy chemicals, the three types of happiness, how screen addiction actually works, and three life skills (nonviolent communication, how to meditate, and The Four Agreements).
PDF · 23 pages · by Jared Hippler
The exact files our Fun-Raisers carry. No-equipment energizers, deep community-building games, family game cards, and our own catalog. Each one downloads in a click.
One hundred no-equipment icebreakers and energizers from the International HIV/AIDS Alliance. Howdy Howdy, Human Knot, Fruit Salad, Killer Wink, and more. Perfect to break the ice with any group, anywhere.
PDFCommunity-building games organized in five steps, from bonding to deeper sharing. Footloose, MAFIA, Trust Fall, Car Wash, Fishbowl. Carries clear consent and comfort notes for every group.
PDFThirty-three family game cards from Playworks. Each lists player count, ages, equipment, setup, how to play, at-home accommodations, and challenge ideas. Red Light Green Light, Gaga, Freeze Dance, and more.
DOCXOur own catalog, organized by Circle, Partnered, Tag, Racing, and Other. Secret Service, Zip Zap Zop, Ninja, Blob Tag, Group Juggling. The games we run at every Fun Field.
DOCXWhere our play comes from. Credits Bernie DeKoven and the New Games Movement, Project Adventure, Jim Cain's Raccoon Circles, and the books that shaped our compendium of games.
DOCXA favorite icebreaker. Name an animal and four words you love about it, then a second animal and four more. A playful, fast way to open a group up and get everyone talking.
Every game we run, in one spreadsheet, with three ready-made session plans (about 50 to 55 minutes each) that include timings and debrief prompts such as "What is happiness, and how do you define it?"
A taste of what is inside the collections above. Every name here is a real game you can run, drawn from our five sources.
Zip Zap Zop · Ninja · Zoom Schwartz · Group Juggling · Made You Look · Me Switch! · Stand Off · Gorilla · Dancing Statues · Rainstorm · Group Statues · Pass the Energy
Freeze Tag · Tunnel Tag · Blob Tag · Affirmation Tag · Dragon's Tail · Sharks & Fish · Rattlers · Smaug · Crab Butt · Red Light Green Light · Gaga · Evolution
Howdy Howdy · Three Truths and a Lie · Killer Wink · The Sun Shines On · Fruit Salad · Human Knot · Names and Adjectives · Connecting Eyes · Simon Says · Coconut · Mirror Image
Trust Fall · Car Wash · Fishbowl · Lottery Questions · Footloose · Ha Ha · Electricity · The Pie of Life · Group Story · MAFIA · Concentration Ball · Night at the Museum
Full rules, player counts, and accommodations live inside the downloadable collections above.
A few resources we point people to again and again, hosted elsewhere but worth your time.
Marshall Rosenberg's nonviolent communication, the framework we teach for resolving conflict and being truly heard. A core life skill from the Happiness Booklet.
Google Drive folderOur open folder of game files and resources on Google Drive. Browse it, borrow from it, and bring play to your own community.
External researchJonathan Haidt's research on what happened to youth mental health after 2012. The evidence behind much of what we teach about screens and play.
You learn more about someone in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
Every download here is given away. The teachers who carry it into under-resourced schools and orphanages are funded by people like you. $297 trains one teacher, for a whole classroom.