Dragonfly games
The games described at this page are intended for young dragonfly enthusiasts, but I know that many old odonatologists
still are young at heart! Maybe some day those games will be a part of the Olympic games!
All those games comes from Tobias Ivarsson's book Trollsländor - ett kompendium
many thanks to Tobias for letting me use his text.
Dragonfly charades
A game to play at dragonfly courses, in trains, at the bus stop or in indoors during heavy rain.
All that's needed is a list of dragonfly names.
One person closes his/her eyes and points out a dragonfly name in the list, then the person tries
to describe the dragonfly with gestures, without saying anything. The other persons tries to guess
which dragonfly it is. The first person guessing correctly will be the next person to close his/her eyes and point.
A good game for learning dragonfly names.
Keying dragonflies
A more advanced game for situations like the previous. Also for this game at least two persons are needed.
Use the key from your favorite dragonfly book. There's two different versions of this game:
1: One person starts reading the key from the beginning, the other persons chose the alternative in the key they like best.
At last it ends up in on species and the quiz is to find out what species it is.
2: The members of the game choose a species in the beginning of the game then they have to choose the correct alternatives
in the key to end up at the right species. This game is a good way for learning using the key. To be able to join the game
the members need at least some experience of the key.
Catching dragonfly
A good game for improving catching technique. All members holding a net, form a ring with some meters distance. One person start
throwing a cone or a small ball, the opposite member uses his/her net to catch it. From the beginning every person
is dragonfly, for every miss the fist letter is removed and he/she becomes ragonfly etc. When no letter is left the person is removed from the game.
The last person in the game is the winner.
Casting skin
A recommended number of team members for every larva is four persons. Start some meters from a finishing line,
every team lay down at the ground in a parallel line. At the start signal the person in the end of every line
rolls over the other members of the larva, so he/she will be first in the line. The person that is now in the end of
the line starts to roll in the same way. You don't have to wait until you are in the end of the line, as soon as you have been overrolled
you can start rolling. In this way every larva keep moving until the first larva have crossed the finishing line. This game
might be fun even if there is only one team.
New games
I'm sure that there are many more dragonfly games to be invented. Maybe you know some other dragonfly game, then please drop me a mail
telling me about it and I will include it at this page.
© Tobias Ivarsson & Martin Peterson 1997
