Classic games you can play in the garden: The floor is lava; maths garden games; garden chess and snakes and ladders.
198 – The floor is lava
Tuesday 17 June. Sunny. 21°C
We’re starting a new thread of games you can play in the garden. We start with a classic. B loves ‘the floor is lava’. Last time we played it she tied clothes to her feet and declared herself the winner with zero effort. I’m moving it to the garden and start with simple rules.
Me: “Ok. So anything natural, like earth and grass, is fine. Lava is anything man made like paving stones”.
I reckon this is straightforward enough. We have a path through the garden and a garage in the middle so it’s not going to be easy to get from one end to the other. B agrees in principle and we agree a spot the winner has to touch first at the other end. She has some issues though.
B: “What about the cut wooden bits?” (we have a lot of railway sleeper type logs).
Me: “oh, um. Good point”
B: “I know. They’re MAGMA. You can walk on them but you have to go very slowly.”
Me: “Fair enough”.
We set off from the starting point. We work out we can pick ferns and branches from the tree to step on (sorry plants!) and make reasonable progress. The layout of the garden helps. There are a few tricky jumps. B wins of course.
Then she sets off with the variations. We try timing each other – so we don’t get in each others way. Then she comes up with a lot more rules about using plastic plant saucers, but only twice, and cutting things down. I think she sources Minecraft for some of them. Eventually I lose track of them and leave her to it.
191 – Maths garden games
Tuesday 24 June. Cloudy. 20°C
An old favourite this and I revert five years doing it.
Me: “Can you fetch me 5 daisies?”
B looks at me: “Seriously?”
Fine. I’ll play by myself. I fetch 5 daisies, 2 dandelions, 3 leaves and 4 white flowers. Then I dare clever clogs to make some sums with them.
I’m still years out. She starts writing in chalk – she’s doing the mean, the median, the mode and the range. I’ve forgotten what most of these are. I try and get her to do the answers in numbers of daisies. She just gives me a look. Ten year olds can be less fun!
101 – Garden chess
Friday 19 September. Cloudy. 17°C
One of B’s best ideas this. She’s taking over finding a challenge today. I put my feet up and she disappears into the garden for about half an hour. When I’m finally allowed out, she’s created a wonder. A garden chessboard.
It’s beautifully done, with different flowers and leaves for different pieces. She’s used chalk to mark it out. It had never occurred to me how easy it is to recreate board games outside this way. I’m wondering what else we can do (snakes and ladders has t be a good one?).
We sit and play for over an hour. Her fuchsia flower pawns standing up as well as my leaves to the rough and tumble. Will explore this more in future.
17 – Snakes and ladders
Monday 15 December. Rainy. 12°C
It’s turning into a very rainy, very mild December and we’re running out of ideas. It’s so dark so quickly after school. I give up and turn to B:
“HELP!!! We have to do a challenge and it’s almost dark. We need an idea!”
B is good at coming up with ideas. She heads out into the garden to work something out and takes the chalk. She draws a board and says we need two different types of leaves. Then she lays the ladders and I do the snakes. Helpfully it stops raining and we’re both impressed that the chalk will work. The kitten enjoys chasing after the dice and the rabbits come out to watch too.
