Hello. How is everyone at your School? Did you have a good summer? We have been sent to my Aunty’s house. She runs a Guest House and bar. She has saved these things and challenged us to see what games we can make?

She has also given us some dalasi to buy a few things. We have bought a large piece of card and some coloured markers, three small hard balls and three ping pong balls.

Do you have any ideas about what games we can make?

We have quite a few. Let us show you.

We have carefully marked out sixty four squares, eight by eight. Can you guess what game we are making?

We are going to colour half the squares in black to make the playing board

Nearly finished!

Yes, we have made a draughts set and we are using the bottle tops as draughts

Now we are marking out another board game. Its called Ludo and it is very popular in The Gambia

It’s a game for four players and you have to get you counters around the board and into their home.

We forgot to but a dice so we have made a spinner from card and a nail in the middle with 1 to 6 on it

You spin the spinner and what ever number you get says how many squares you can move your counter. The winner is the person who gets their four counters around the board and home first.

Now we are playing The Flag Game You draw nine circles in a square and connect the circles up. Each player has three counters of different colours.

Each player takes it in turn to put a counter on the flag. You win by getting three counters in a row. It’s a bit like noughts and crosses.

When you placed all three counters on the flag you take it in turns to move one of your counters. But you can only move it on to an empty circle that is next to your counter. You keep playing until someone gets three in a row and wins.

And this is called The Frog Game. It’s a mental challenge. There are seven lily pads. There are 3 yellow frogs at one end and three green fogs at the other. The middle lily pad is empty

The challenge is to get the 3 yellow frogs to where the green ones are and the three green frogs to where the yellow ones are in as few moves as possible.

But there are strict rules. You can only move a frog one space and only onto an empty lily pad. Or you can jump over a single frog if the lily immediately the other side is empty. You can move and jump backwards as well as forward. The challenge is to see if you can do it in just 17 moves. Good Luck.

We are using the nine plastic water bottles and the hard balls we bought to play skittles.

You have one go to see if you can knock all nine bottles down.... and that’s a STRIKE!

I have only got seven down. I think the girls are going to win this game.

This is our uncle’s awari set. It’s a traditional African game. He does not let us play his board so we are going to see if we can make one.

We are going to use the egg boxes to make the board and the bottle tops as counters The awari board needs six holes on each side. The holes are called houses. The game is for two people and each player owns one row of six houses

Each player starts with four counters in each of their six houses

The rules are a bit complicated but you pick up all the counters in one of your houses and move them around the board

And if you last counter lands in an empty house you capture all the counters in the house opposite. The winner is the player who captures the most counters

We are using the cans to have a stacking competition

We all found 7 possible with care but 8 was much more difficult.

We had races to see who could stack 7 tins the quickest.

We have cut the plastic milk bottles in half and we are going to use the tops as catcher.s

You have to bounce the ball once

And see if the other person in your team can catch it. Its boys against girls and the team with the most catches on the run wins.

We have used the long cardboard box to make a pitch for blow football. We are also going to use the straws and ping pong balls

You have to blow really hard. We made a rule that if your straw touches the ball the other player gets a free blow.

And of course, where there is a ball, what ever its size, us boys love to play football. Auntie will make us play outside for sure.

Well we hope you enjoyed finding out about the games we made and played during the summer.

We start back at school on September 16 th. And before you start thinking how lucky we are we don’t get a half term break like you. We will write to you soon. Bye for now.