Island Games
As the girls have gotten older, we've begun to play more and more games. I came up with two ways to make some games feel special to the island. The first is "Periwinkle Mancala." Filling the mancala board with periwinkle shells connects the game to the landscape around us.
The new game this year is called "Thunder Hole Dice". This game is played with three dice and about 45 smooth stones which we retrieved from "Thunder Hole", a beautiful cave-like spot on the island that is filled with smooth stones of all sizes.
"Thunder Hole Dice" can be played with any number of players, but you need around 10 - 15 playing pieces per person. The first person rolls one dice. The number on the dice is her number for the round. She then rolls all three dice. If she gets the number on one dice she yells "BOOM" and takes one stone. If she gets the number on two dice she yells "BOOM BOOM" and takes 5 stones. If she gets the number on three dice she yells "BOOM" and automatically wins. She rolls until she doesn't get her number on any of the 3 dice.
Keep going with the next person rolling one dice to get the number for their turn. The first person to get 15 stones wins. If someone gets over 15 stones he has to put them all back and start over.
Either of these games would be easy to adapt to another special place. You could use acorns, pine cones, seaglass, or anything that you find in your surroundings. You can change the names of the games to fit your special spot and change the shout-out word from "BOOM" to something else. I know that our girls will always associate these games with the island.
Precious are these days!
What great ideas! We love playing games, and the boys often make up their own with rocks or shells or acorns, but nothing 'organized' yet! ;) Looks like a wonderful way to make them feel more organic.
I love the way you adapted the games to the island. I picked up a Mancala board at the thrift shop the other day and am looking forward to learning how to play-it didn't come with directions but I'm sure I can find them online.
hello, Looks like you had a wonderfull week at the island. lovely pictures!
I love the thunder hole game. We will definitly play that game !
I love the manual you or the girls made for the game. Makes it even more special.
By the way, what are the green an blue things on the picture? Are that also stones?
Oh, the delight of imaginative play! Much as I enjoy our days of playing on the waters edge and collecting rocks and sticks, I'm eager for the days when they create games and being creating such memories for themselves!
Sounds like a wonderful vacation!
We love acorn hats/acorns noughts and crosses. Can't wait till the boys are a little older to try these ideas too! Priceless.
Great games!
What a great idea to connect a game to the natural surroundings. And the periwinkles are gorgeous! Are they ones you collected this time around, or ones you collected previously?
Ilse-that's all sea glass. The wild side of the island had lots of it this year--even blue which is really hard to find.
Tammy--those are new periwinkles. We had been using larger ones and decided this year to use only small, yellow ones....the things you have time to ponder on a vacation!