Pick Up Sticks

Today I thought we'd combine a craft to make and a game to play. Pick up Sticks is one of my childhood favorites, so it won prize and was the highlight of the day. First we made the game pieces. Start with 10 long bamboo skewers.

Cut them into 5 inch long pieces, making a total of 20 sticks. I used the sharp back part of some needle nose pliers to cut with, but a sturdy pair of scissors would work too. Discard the pointy scraps.

Next sand the ends. You can use sand paper if you've got it. We did not. So we rubbed the ends on the sidewalk, which worked great.

Lay out a mess mat, cause this next step will need it. (Our mess mat is just 2 yards of plastic I bought at the fabric store, similar to what a wipe-able tablecloth is made out of. Those work great too. You can pick up a holiday one just after the season has ended for super cheap.) Now get out the paints! Let the kids pick out their 4 favorite colors. We used pink, blue, brown & black. Paint 10 pink, 6 blue, 3 brown, 1 black. (Of course, change up the colors here as you'd like.)

Now, time to play! The rules are simple. Hold all of the sticks in your fist, with the single black one in the middle of the stack.

Let go and just let the sticks fall where ever. Take turns removing one stick at a time. If any of the sticks move (other than the one you're trying to remove) take your hand away, leave everything right where it is, and the turn goes to the next person. If you can successfully remove a stick without any others moving then you get to go again. If you take out the black stick it can be used as a tool to help remove other sticks... a huge advantage.

Scoring goes like this:
Black - 4 pts
Brown - 3 pts
Blue - 2 pts
Pink - 1 pt

Of course, that's how the rules really go. We quickly made up our own. They went a little like this: Any stick could be used to get more sticks. Our youngest player could move the sticks as much as she wanted without her turn ending. Scoring was one point per stick. Then it turned into a game of organizing the sticks by color, and then dropping them at different heights above the floor. I'm sure if we'd played longer more "kid rules" would have been created... I loved watching them having fun and creating their own way of playing.