Colonial America Games

Roll the Hoop

• Roll the hoop is a game played with a hoop, usually constructed of metal or wood, and a dowel. Children and adults played this game by running alongside the rolling hoop, keeping it moving by pushing it forward with the dowel. Often there were contests and races to see who could roll the hoop the farthest or the fastest.

Marbles

• Variations of marbles have been played around the world for thousands of years. Though marbles today are typically made of different-colored glass, marbles during Colonial times were constructed of clay and made in a variety of inconsistent sizes. The object of marbles is to win marbles from other players by a few different methods. The first method includes players attempting to knock one another's marbles out of a circle --- if a player knocks another player's marble out of the circle, he wins that marble. In the second method, the first player throws a marble into the dirt, and the second player tries to knock the marble; if the second player is successful, he gets to take the marble; if not, the first player gets to try to shoot the second player's marble.

Jackstraws

• Jackstraws is a game which is now known as pick-up sticks and was originally introduced to early colonial settlers by the American Indians. The game is played with 15 to 20 sticks of different colors and lengths. The sticks are held in a bunch and released about ten inches from the ground, allowing them to fall and overlap one another. The player who drops the sticks begins the game and works to remove as many sticks as possible without moving any of the other sticks. Once the first player moves a different stick other than the one picked, she forfeits her turn, and the next player begins picking sticks until he too forfeits a turn, and so on until all the sticks are picked up off the ground.

Hopscotch

• Hopscotch is played by drawing squares on the ground with chalk, sometimes a single square and sometimes a double, connected to one another side by side. A pebble is thrown into the squares to show where a child begins to jump and then she is to progress by jumping on one foot through the rest of the squares without falling. There are often chants or rhyming songs that children sing to the rhythm of their jumping.