Multicultural Monday: Play! Book Review

Sharing Saturday is still open. Please stop by and share your child-oriented crafts and activities and check out what others have shared!

For Multicultural Monday, I am going to review the book Kids Around the World Play! by Arlette N. Braman. This is a book my friend got out of the library for me. For some reason her local library would not let me take it out through interlibrary loan. Thank you, Jill!!

This book is set up in different sections. It has your word games and brain teasers, chance games, skill games, action games, board games, and how to make toys. Many of the ideas in the book are not necessarily new, but the book gives you some history and how they are played around the world. 

American Jacks Source

For example, in America we play Jacks. In Kenya (remember our post about Kenya?) they are called Jackstones. They use stones, nuts, or peach pits for the jacks and ball. One of the stones is used as the ball and tosses it in the air and has to scoop up as many of the remaining stones and catch the one tossed in the air. The book goes further with names for this game, in Laos it is Jack Sticks (played with chopsticks), in Singapore Five Stones (using a triangular cloth bag filled with rice or seeds as the ball), in Vietnam Truyen-Truyen (picking up chopsticks) and in Iraq Knucklebones (using the anklebones of sheep). Knucklebones was also the name of the game in Ancient Rome and Greece.

Source

Another great example is Hopscotch (here is where I shared our Hopscotch). In Japan it is Ishikeri.The board described in the book is slightly different from the typical American board. It is rectangular with two columns--each column has squares go between two in the column or one and the numbers 1-16.  Again this game goes back to the ancient Romans. And it gives the different names from different countries--in Great Britain it is Hop-Round, in Aruba Pele, in China Gat Fei Gei and in Honduras LaRayuela.

Overall, I am enjoying this book. We have not tried any of the games in it yet, but I definitely want to have Hazel try some. So if you are looking for some fun ways to teach multiculturalism to your kids, this book is a great start.

This week the Readathon theme is imagination. I will be sharing more later this week. Next Monday the Virtual Book Club for Kids link party starts. This month's author is Don and Audrey Wood. I hope you will join us!

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