Hand game

This article is about games played with the hands. For the feature in card games, see Hand game (cards). For Native American guessing game, see Handgame.

Hand games are games played using only the hands of the players.^[1] Hand games exist in a variety of cultures internationally, and are of interest to academic studies in ethnomusicology and music education.^[1][2] Hand games are used to teach music literacy skills and socio-emotional learning in elementary music classrooms internationally.^[3][4][5]

Mushi-ken, a Japanese hand game (1809)

Examples of hand games

• Arm wrestling
• Bloody knuckles
• Chopsticks (sticks)
• The circle game
• Clapping games (Pat-a-cake and variations like Mary Mack)
• Fingerhakeln
• Hand cricket
• Mercy
• Morra (finger counting)
• Odds and evens
• Red hands (or hand-slap game)
• Rock paper scissors
• Sansukumi-ken
• Thumb war (or thumb wrestling)
• "Where are your keys?" (language acquisition game)

Less strictly, the following may be considered hand games:^{[citation needed]}

• Fingers (drinking game, but debatable since game can be played without the drink)
• Jacks (uses jacks)
• Knife game (uses knife)
• Spellbinder (uses paper and pencil)
• Stick gambling (uses a stick)
• String games, such as cat's cradle

See also

• Fingerboarding
• Fingerplay
• Hand jive
• Hand Shadows
• Thumb twiddling