How to Play Like a Pioneer

This year at TITP we've been playing games with the visitors.  We've been assigned to do jump roping in the street, but there are often not a lot of kids around to jump rope with (the jump rope is huge!) and it's a little hard to jump rope while holding the baby.  So, as I've wandered around the village with my own kids, I take a pocketful of pioneer toys/games to play with the visitors.

Here's what goes in my pocket:

We haven't played marbles yet this year, but the kids like the top, and the buzz saw (button on a string) that spins.  It was really fun pretending that the helicopter looking thing was a lie detector (I'll find out its name)!  The button on the really long string is for Button-button, Who's Got the Button?  That's fun to use when there's a group of kids standing around and everyone takes a piece of the string, then you pass the button from hand to hand while one person tries to guess who's hand it's under.  I picked up the ball & cup toy yesterday at the Museum of Church History & Art.  I could have also bought several other things, and easily spent $30 on childrens' games.

While we were at the museum store, I saw this little book:

I had to have it!  I don't HAVE to have a lot of stuff, but I needed this!  The book explains Tug of War, Button on a String, Card Games, Cat's Cradle, Cup & Ball, Dice Games, Dominoes, Checkers, Fox & Geese, Graces (my mom has one of these from Williamsburg and we LOVE it!), Hoop & Roll, Hopscotch, Hornbook, Battledore & Shuttlecock, Jacks, Jump Rope (with some rhymes), Marbles, Nine-Men's Morris, Nine Pins, Pick-Up Sticks, Quoits, Shinny, Solitaire, Thaumatrope, Tit-tat-toe, Twirling a Plate, Tops, and Yo-yo.  The booklet is 28 pages long.

The Museum also had many activities & games for children:

Stitching Sampler & Cross-Stitch

Harmonica

Assorted Dolls

 Buzz Saw

Tatting/Button Lover's

 Hooey Stick/Jacob's Ladder

Chalk Board Set/Jump Rope Set

Loom

Quilt Set

Marbles

Triangle (not sure what that was)

Cup & Ball

  

Weaving/Cat's Cradle

Pick-Up Sticks

Hopscotch/Penny Whistle

It looked like most of the games were from Historical Folk Toys, and a lot of the information about the toys is on the web site, including the history.