| Materials Required: | A pasteboard shoe box, |
| Some marbles, | |
| Pen and ink, | |
| Scissors. |
Although this game is played with marbles, girls as well as boys will enjoy it, and it is so easily prepared that it can be played at short notice. Take a long pasteboard box—a shoe box is about the right size. Remove the cover and turn it upside down. Now, starting at the lower edge, draw five doorways, like those shown in Fig. 103. The one in the centre should be an inch across and an inch and a half high, the two on each side of it an inch and a half wide and two inches high, and the outer ones each two inches wide and two and a half inches high. Cut out these doorways with a sharp, strong pair of scissors and mark over the middle one in pen and ink the number 25. The two on either side of it have marked above them 10, and the other two each have 5. Stand the box, or stable, thus prepared, against the wall and place a mark four feet from it. Each player has three marbles, and in turn tries to roll or shoot them from the mark through the little doors into the box. If he succeeds in putting one through the smallest door he makes twenty-five; if through either of the other doors his score is increased by the number marked above it. There should be a time limit for the game—half an hour, for example. The score of each player, which is kept on a sheet of paper, is added at the end of that time and the one having the most points has won the game.
Fig. 103
Plants and Flowers
| Materials Required: | As many pencils and sheets of paper as players, |
| A large sheet of cardboard, | |
| Some seed catalogues, | |
| A tube of paste, | |
| Scissors. |
Although a number of children can play this game, two or three will enjoy it quite as well. Any boy or girl can make it. You will need first of all a number of seed catalogues. Cut from these eighteen or twenty pictures of flowers and plants, taking care not to leave the names on them. Write in pencil, on the back of each, a number (any one from 1 to 18) and the name—this is for your own guidance later on. Now make a list of the flowers and plants, each with its number before it. This is the key, to be put away till after the game is played. Take a large sheet of cardboard, about twenty by twenty-four inches, and paste upon it the flowers and plants in the order of their numbers, marking the number of each clearly in pen and ink underneath it. If you like you can colour the pictures—this will make the game more attractive, of course, and as you can use it many times it is worth while. A loop of string, by which to hang it, should be run through the top of the card at the centre. When you are ready to play the game hang the cardboard sheet where all can see it; give each player a pencil and a piece of paper, on the left side of which numbers from 1 to 18 have been marked. Each child tries in the time allowed—about twenty minutes—to guess the names of the flowers and plants on the sheet or cardboard, and write each opposite its number on his piece of paper. The correct names are then read from the key and the players check off their guesses. The one who has guessed the greatest number correctly is of course the winner.