Traditional Games and Adversity Quotient: Exploring the Impact of Sunda Manda on Children Aged 5-6 Years

Adversity quotient plays an important role in strengthening children’s resilience, perseverance, and ability to face challenges in daily life. This study aimed to examine the effect of the traditional Sunda Manda game on improving the adversity quotient of children aged 5–6 years at Al-Azhar 22 Semarang Kindergarten. The study employed a pre-experimental method using a one-group pretest–posttest design involving 23 children. Data were collected through interviews, observations, and documentation, and analyzed using normality, homogeneity, and hypothesis testing with the Paired Sample t-Test. The findings revealed a significant increase in children’s adversity quotient after participating in the Sunda Manda game. The mean pretest score increased from 43.82 to 54.60 in the posttest. Furthermore, the statistical analysis showed a significance value of 0.000 (p < 0.05), indicating that the Sunda Manda game had a positive and significant effect on improving children’s adversity quotient. The game not only enhanced physical endurance but also fostered children’s persistence, courage in facing challenges, and problem-solving abilities. Based on these findings, the Sunda Manda traditional game can be recommended as an alternative learning strategy to support the development of mental resilience and adaptive skills in early childhood education.