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Play Games: During these years play gamesing ball takes precedence over games of chase and play gamesing with toys. Imaginative play games decreases during this age period. For girls there is a rapid decline in doll-play games toward the end of this period. Boys would probably show a similar decline in their interest in play gamesing space cadets, pilots, G-men, and cowboys. At thirteen or fourteen there is a marked falling off of interest in childhood games. No abrupt cessation of any specific play games activity, however, occurs for all children at any age level. Changes in play games interests are gradual. Differences in play games activities between age groups are smaller than those among children of the same age; play games interests overlap from age to age.
At no age is play games exclusively individualistic or entirely social. Under favorable conditions, ten-year-old boys become interested in teamwork, show loyalty to their team, and play games a larger number of organized games such as baseball. This growing interest in the team partly accounts for the increasing popularity, between the ages of nine and sixteen, of ball games which require skill in throwing and catching and participation in more complicated group organization.
Although the nature of children's play games varies with the environment, surveys of children's play games interests have been sufficiently extensive to warrant certain generalizations. Some of their games such as hide-and-seek, blindman's bluff, hopscotch, Red Rover, dodge ball, have existed for centuries. The peak of variety in play games activities appears to be in the ninth year. After the tenth year there is a decrease in the number of different play games activities reported.
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