Children often experience conflict with family, friends, or classmates. Typical conflicts include teasing, arguing over who gets to play with a toy first, and quarreling about who owns a particular item. Unfortunately, most children are not equipped with the skills necessary to prevent or peacefully manage conflicts. Peacetown was created to teach children conflict resolution skills and give them the opportunity to practice those skills. By playing this game, clients can learn to work with other people to peacefully solve problems.
Peacetown follows two children, Steve and Wendy, through a normal day in their town. The game includes a two-sided board. Side one, which shows exteriors of Peacetown, teaches eight basic conflict resolution skills: Apologizing, Using Chance, Compromising, Taking Turns, Sharing, Avoiding, Ignoring, and Getting Help. Side two, which shows what is happening inside the buildings of Peacetown, teaches deeper conflict resolution skills: Listening, Respecting Differences, Communicating Feelings, Taking Responsibility for Actions, and Attacking the Problem, Not the Person. On both sides of the board, children and adults demonstrate the particular conflict resolution skills targeted during the particular game. It also makes the conflict resolution skills continually visually available for the clients for use during game play and to help them better recall them.
As players move around the board, they read Conflict Cards that have scenarios of conflicts that have occurred. Players choose from the available conflict resolution skills on the board for ways to solve the conflicts, collecting Peace Points for every appropriate answer. There is also a Team-Up element near the end of the game where players must form teams of two. Players then work together as teams to solve the remaining conflicts and pool their Peace Points together in order to win the game. It is the team with the most points at the end of the game that wins.
Once you feel as if your client has mastered the basic conflict resolution skills on side one of the board, then you flip the board over and start working on the more advanced conflict resolution skills found on side two of the board. It is basically a brand new game with it’s own set of game cards. Game play is the same as on side one of the board. Peacetown is two games in one!
This game can be played with up to six players with a minimum of two players. It can be played in a school setting or in a private practice setting. Therapists or school counselors can play this game with one client and then team-up with their client near the end of the game. This is a game for elementary aged children ages 6 and up.
Peacetown comes with 6 pawns, 1 die, 1 two-sided game board, 35 Conflict Cards for Game 1, 30 Chance Cards for Game 1, 7 Skill Cards for Game 1, 35 Conflict Cards for Game 2, 30 Chance Cards for Game 2, 5 Skill Cards for Game 2, and 100 Peace Points.
