Why I decided not to teach “Johnny can’t cross the river”

One of the games my children love to play here in Gesses with the Schwenk kids and especially if other children come to visit, is Johnny can’t cross the river.  I have been looking for games and songs to teach the different concepts:  numbers, colors, days of the week, time, etc. 

This week, I decided to translate Johnny can’t cross the river with  some adaptation.  Obviously I would change the name Johnny to a Gumuz name.  We chose Wocay.  That was easy enough.  Hmm ... no rivers around here though they do have a word for it.  I couldn’t seem to find the equivalent word to “cross the river”.  I tried changing it to cross the road but it also just didn’t fit the translation I was looking for.   As I was struggling to adapt this game into Gumuz, I realized that I needed to scrap the game.

If you are familiar with the game, you will know that “Johnny” can’t cross the river unless he is wearing a certain color. (This can be adapted as well to include things such as Johnny can’t cross the river unless he has a rainbow face.  It gets sillier as the kids go along.)  Well this brings a rather large problem.  Most preschool children don’t wear clothes or if they do, it is a long colorless t-shirt. 

Suddenly the game was looking pretty dull.

If you are not wearing the color stated, you have to run and try not to be caught by the person calling out.  This brought another difficulty.  I don’t want children falling down and scraping their knees.

We did play the game with my Gumuz language teacher and he loved it but ... it will not be an official game taught.