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.

Mushi-ken, a Japanese hand game (1809)

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

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:

• 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