I met twice this year with classic wooden outdoor games and activities for children during events at village parties. They are games made of wood, very basic and simple things that they love. Some to play alone and others to do it in pairs or as a team.
I want to ride some for summer so I can play with my daughters and my nephews, taking advantage of wood that we have that are being spoiled by having outdoors. This article is a compilation of those that I have been able to take pictures and those that I remember. There was one day that there were so many people that I couldn’t take pictures. In all games we can make many variations of both rules and variations in construction. The notes are as a reminder.
You can ride a good gymnast with all this. I separate the games into 2, those of skill and those that are motor and balance activities.
Hability games
In this we put ball at the far left and moving the sticks and opening them you have to get the ball to fall on the rings we want. It should be noted that the sticks are attached to the right with eyebolts that simulate a kneecap.
In this pendulum we have to place pieces without them falling. One of the hardest games of all I’ve put. Immediately unbalanced and all the pieces fall.
Here we place the marble in the upper left and you have to lower it to the bottom without it falling by changing the inclination of the horizontal woods with two handles.
It is a vertical maze. We put the marble in the piece of wood and we have to take it to the hole we decide without getting into the others. It is controlled with the two strings. It is very simple and build and very fun.
It is a very large maze we put a marble or a rubber ball and we have to complete it. The grace lies in the fact that due to its dimensions, the board must be moved between 2 or more people.
A classic. Throw the rings with rope to the sticks. There are different ways to play if we want to do it right. We can invent the scoring rules. The detail of putting the rings with a color that identifies them. In the case of the rope with an insulating tape on the joint. it’s a very good idea.
In the next one, the marbles are thrown from the left side of the board that is the bottom part of the image and you have to get them to climb the top ramp and finish in the 3 holes.
Sorry for the quality of the photo but to see what the game is all right.
Here we have a kind of table football with two dolls each. In addition to turning to hit the ball, they move laterally along the guide.
This is a variation of an air hockey. Each has the same amount of discs. With the rubber you have to pass them through the central groove. At the moment a player has 3 discs in his field he loses. This one is very funny.
There was also a game similar to an air hockey, with a board, two goal slots and discs and with one piece in hand we hit the discs to try to score our opponent.
As a culmination of these skill games, there were the traditional ones like juggling balls, diabolos, juggling bars. There were more, but as I said, there were many people and it was difficult to take pictures. Anyway as soon as you remember any or see the article again.
Motor and balance games
They are very fun especially those who compete for teams.
These skis in pairs, make you work as a team, since you have to coordinate very well to move. The activity consisted of conducting a race between couples on a circuit.
Of all the games and objects, this is the most difficult to manufacture for us. But it’s still interesting to see it.
Another balance classic, very easy to manufacture and reproduce
Here the stilts are missing. I have seen two types: Some that are what we do with boats and ropes and stretches the rope to have it tense and adjust the boat under your foot and others that are stilts shaped by two sticks and two stumps to climb. The stumps or platforms are adjustable at different heights.
Related to this topic and finally I leave you a very simple wooden ferris wheel with manual action for children that we talked about a long time ago.
Wooden ferris wheel for children
Here you have the artifact that I possibly liked the Medieval Market of Sagunto (Spain). It is a wooden ferris wheel used as an attraction for children to have fun and to move manually.
This ferris wheel was brought a couple more years until 2012, right now they bring others bring larger and more complex ones. This, although it does not leave plans for its construction, is so simple that only by looking at the photos carefully can it be seen how to build it.
If you want to build one, we have not left the plans, but seeing the images is very easy to manufacture. The mechanism is a pulley and the structure is very, very basic, you just have to imagine the dimensions that interest you.
It has 4 buckets, and when one is empty use the bags that you can see on the left to balance the weight and that the ferris wheel rotates continuously.
As I said the ferris wheel is moved by a pulley. It is a person who has to be constantly spinning it. With hardly any effort, he turns and controls the speed of it.
I leave a detail of the pulleys, this ferris wheel has a tremendously effective operating mechanism.
With a good wood you can easily make this transportable ferris wheel.
The structure can be seen in the images, although another day I would like to talk about structures, how force is distributed and how to design good structures for our inventions.