In preparation for Charles bday party coming up next month, I have been researching old fashioned games such as marbles, jacks, pick up sticks, etc. The theme he chose was "The Snowman". You know, the story by Raymond Briggs? Well, it was also made into an animation that I absolutely love. There are no lines spoken in the whole thing except for the lines sung by a choir boy in a song entitled "Walking in the Air". The movie, which is only about 25 minutes long, is entirely set to beautiful, soothing music. I will often turn it on just to listen to it while I got about my work. LOL.. I have seen this so often that just hearing a particular bit I can picture what's happening.
Anyway, I was completely stumped when Charles informed me that's what he wanted. How was I supposed to work with that? However, the film always give me the impression of the era when TV was still new fangled and children still played outside more than anything else. There were no video games, computer, etc. so they still played all those old fashioned games, which gave me the idea of looking up stuff about those as games for the party. Super easy stuff since we already have a huge marble set and even a great set of wooden pick up sticks and I happen to know that our local RX that we frequent the most has an awesome set of metal jacks. But, I digress. This post is not about any of those things. It's not even about your average game of marbles. This is an online computer game of logic that's quite interesting to play.
I had typed in trying to find diagrams and instructions for the old fashioned marbles game and instead I was directed to Brain Vista, a site with lots of interested brain teasers and ames one of which is Marbles. It takes planning and logic as you try to choos which marble to jump which way and end with only one marble on the board. I can't get less than 6. And no, you're not wasting your time. You're building your skill of logic and thinking. Have fun!
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