THIS IS MY
PROJECT ON
COLONIAL
GAMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Summary
 Back then, children didn’t have Nintendo games, the
Television, or books to read.
 They had to make their own games.
 Some were made from chores, and others were made
from tools.
 Some games, like 9-pins, just needed a few materials,
like pins and a ball.
GAMES IN GENERAL
 Children usually played the games that their parents
played.
 Children and adults both played dice, dominoes, and
cards.
Board games
 Older children played chess, while smaller children
played checks, a form of checkers.
Tops
 Children played tops for
fun indoors. They played
with, obviously,
tops(shown right).
 The goal of the game was
to hit another’s top and
knock it over or make it
stop without harming
your own(shown on the
next slide).
Morris
 Morris was a game like tic-tac-toe. The idea was to get
three in a row on the board.
 The people playing would put pieces in one at a time.
 Then he/she would move his/her pieces and try to get
three in a row.
 When a player gets 3 in a row, he takes on of his
opponent’s pieces. The game is over when 2 pieces are
left.
Morris example
Archery
 Archery helped boys train their skill for hunting. They
would have a wooden post.
 Boys will then get a bow and a quiver full of arrows.
They would then shoot at the post.
Bilbo-Catcher
 Bilbo catcher is a game where kids had a cup and a
ball, and they tried to make the ball land in the cup in
one flick.
 Bilbo-catcher was the word for bilboquet. Bille means
ball and boquet means the point of the spear.
Nine-Pins
 Nine-pins is a game very similar to bowling, except
there are only 9 pins, not ten.
 It was only changed to bowling when the English
conquered New Amsterdam and Delaware
 You have a wooden ball and you roll it to try and knock
down all nine pins.
Little Toys
 Little girls back then made dolls out of scraps of fabric,
corn husks and rags. Sometimes they even used a
small dried up apple as a head for the doll.
 Little boys pretended sticks were horses and rode on
them.
Contests
 Children made contest out of their chores.
 Their chores consisted of:
 Carrying wood
 Retrieving berries
 Straightening wool(also called carding wool)
 They would see who can carry the most wood, retrieve
the most berries or card the most wool.
Riddles
 Children also told riddles to pass time more quickly.
 Some riddles were:
 1) What can be seen falling down, but never crying?
 2) What kind of room is not in a house?
 3) What has three feet, but cannot walk?
Riddle Answers
 1)Rain
 2)A mushroom
 3)A yardstick
Bibliography
 http://www.stratfordhall.org/learn/teacher/games.ph
p
 http://www.ssdsbergen.org/Colonial/games.htmhttp:/
 /www.pencaderheritage.org/main/teachtool/games.p
df
 Welcome to Felicity's World 1774 Growing up in
Colonial America by Catherine Gourley. ©Copyright
1999. Pages 8-9