| Materials Required: 12 or 15 articles, large and small, light and heavy. |
This is a lively game that needs little preparation. All you will have to provide is a number of articles, toys, pieces of china (not valuable ones), a glass of water, some very small things and one or more large ones, something heavy like a dumb-bell or flatiron and something light—a palmleaf fan, for example. When you have them all collected, on a table or stand on one side of the room where the game is to be played, place another table or stand across the room. Then you must have a clock or a watch, and that is all—except the players. Each child in turn takes one thing at a time, from the stand where the various articles are piled, and carries it to the table at the opposite side of the room. It is done as quickly as possible, for the object is to move everything from one place to the other in the least possible time. Each player is timed and his record kept on a piece of paper. If a player drops anything he must carry it back to the starting point and make another trip with it. The next player begins at the table to which the first one took the baggage and carries it, in the same way, back to the first table. So it goes on until everyone has played expressman. The player who succeeds in transferring the baggage in the shortest time is, of course, the winner.
A Hurdle Race
| Materials Required: | A box of tiddledywinks, |
| A sheet of white cardboard, | |
| A box of watercolour paints, | |
| A pencil, | |
| Scissors, | |
| A ball of white string, | |
| Some pins. |
The next time you are kept indoors by the weather, you and a brother or sister may enjoy a hurdle race. It is played with tiddledywink chips and pasteboard hurdles on a large table or on the floor. You can make the hurdles yourself. They should be cut from cardboard, eight inches wide and four inches high. Paint some of them with wooden bars and others green—like high hedges. In making the hurdles, cut the cardboard so that a strip two inches deep by an inch across will extend below each lower corner (see Fig. 104). One of these is bent sharply forward at the place marked by the dotted lines, the other is turned back, forming stands to keep the hurdles upright.
The racecourse will have to be laid out on a covered table or carpeted floor, as the tiddledywinks can only be used on a soft, cushiony surface. You can make the boundaries with white string, held in place here and there with pins. An oval course, though more difficult to mark is rather more exciting than a straight one, but either will do. Have the course eight inches wide and as long as you please. The hurdles may be placed where-ever you choose, but be sure to have plenty of them.
Fig. 104