Referee for a Day

The child becomes the referee of a simple family game — explaining the rules, keeping them the same for everyone, and deciding fairly what happens when someone “forgets” one.

  1. Choose a very simple game the child knows well: rolling a ball at plastic-bottle skittles, a beanbag toss into a basket, or a short dice race along a paper track.
  2. Together make a rule card with three picture rules — for example “Stand behind the line,” “One throw each turn,” “Everyone gets the same number of goes.”
  3. Give the child the referee’s badge (and a whistle or a “beep!”). The referee explains the rules to the players before the game starts.
  4. Play. The adult and any other players follow the rules — mostly. Every so often the adult makes an obvious, friendly mistake: a toe over the line, a sneaky second throw.
  5. The referee stops play, points to the rule on the card, and says what should happen: “That was two throws. One throw each turn. Try again from the line.”
  6. Halfway through, swap: the child plays and the adult referees — applying exactly the same rules to the child. Finish with handshakes all round: “Good game!”

Variation: hold a “rules meeting” before a second round. Players may change one rule only if everyone agrees (a closer line for the youngest player, three throws instead of one), and the referee updates the card.

Requirements

  • Space: 2–4 meters of clear floor indoors, or a patch of garden
  • Surface: Any flat floor or lawn
  • Materials: A simple game (soft ball and plastic bottles, beanbag and basket, or dice and a paper track), tape for a line, paper and marker for the rule card, a paper badge; optional whistle
  • Participants: 1 adult + 1 child minimum; better with 3–4 players
  • Supervision: Light — the adult plays along

Rationale & Objective

Following rules in games is a CDC 5-year milestone, and games are where children first meet rules as something shared and fair rather than imposed by adults. Rakoczy, Warneken & Tomasello (2008) showed that even 3-year-olds grasp that a game has a right way to be played and will correct a puppet who breaks its rules; by 5, children can explain the rule and apply it impartially. Putting the child in the referee’s role turns that knowledge into practice: they must state the rule, notice a breach, and respond calmly and consistently — including when the rule goes against themselves after the swap. The rules-meeting variation echoes Piaget’s classic observations in The Moral Judgment of the Child: children gradually move from seeing rules as fixed and handed down to understanding them as agreements that can be changed when everyone consents. This builds toward the EYFS expectation of playing cooperatively and taking turns, and toward handling rule disputes in playground games without an adult.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: knows the rules but applies them unevenly — strict with others, flexible for self; changes rules mid-game to win; is upset when the adult referee calls their own mistake
  • Developing: explains two or three rules before the game; spots obvious rule-breaking and names the rule with help from the card; accepts a referee’s call with some grumbling
  • Proficient: referees calmly — stops play, states the rule, says what happens next; keeps the rules the same for every player; follows them as a player and accepts calls against self
  • Advanced: tells an honest mistake from deliberate cheating and responds differently; proposes fair rule changes and checks that everyone agrees; referees games between other children without taking sides

Safety Notes

  • Use soft balls or beanbags indoors and clear breakables from the throwing zone
  • If you use a real whistle, keep it for outdoors or agree on one short blow — a sharp whistle close to someone’s ear can hurt
  • Keep the adult’s “mistakes” obvious and light-hearted; the aim is practising fairness, not catching people out
  • Watch for the referee role turning bossy or punitive — steer the child toward “try again” rather than penalties or sending players out
  • A child who finds it very hard to accept any call against them is showing normal 5-year-old frustration; keep games short and end on a handshake, and seek advice only if every game ends in prolonged, intense distress

Hints

  • Playfulness: a striped T-shirt, a clipboard and a yellow paper card make the role irresistible; let the referee announce the players like a sports commentator
  • Sustain interest: change the game each time and let the child draw a new rule card for it; keep the cards in a “referee’s folder”
  • Common mistake: letting the child referee but quietly bending the rules so they also win. The lesson is that rules are the same for everyone, the referee included
  • Limited space: referee a tabletop game instead — a dice race, a matching-pairs game or noughts and crosses work with the same rule card idea
  • Cross-domain: keep score with tally marks (numeracy); the child “reads” the picture rules aloud (symbolic thinking and language); throwing and rolling practise object-control skills
  • Progression: adult referees and child watches → child referees with the rule card → child referees without the card → rules meeting to change a rule by agreement → child referees a game between siblings or friends

Sources

  • CDC Developmental Milestones — 5 years, social/emotional (“Follows rules or takes turns when playing games with other children”)
  • Rakoczy, H., Warneken, F. & Tomasello, M. (2008), “The Sources of Normativity: Young Children’s Awareness of the Normative Structure of Games,” Developmental Psychology, 44(3), 875–881
  • Piaget, J. (1932), The Moral Judgment of the Child — children’s developing understanding of the rules of games
  • Schmidt, M.F.H. & Tomasello, M. (2012), “Young Children Enforce Social Norms,” Current Directions in Psychological Science
  • UK EYFS Statutory Framework — ELG Building Relationships (work and play cooperatively and take turns with others)
  • Vygotsky, L.S. (1978), Mind in Society — games with rules as a later form of play