Pisco Dickles

Playtime

[piscodickles]

Dinner Party

Overview

This is a game you can play with younger kids (from 4yrs), and is another food chain themed game.  You’ll have to make up a bunch of little animal cards, with different animals.  Design them as folding cards, to hide their contents from other players:  one side is an animal, on the other is the dish it brings to the dinner party (the dish is totally irrelevant to the basic game, but is still fun).  My original version included:  Eagle, Wolf, Fox, Cat, Bird, Rabbit, Mouse, Ant, Worm, Cheese. 

Setup

Each kid gets a card with an animal on it.  This must be kept secret.  Each kid sits/stands in their area, which can be considered their ‘house’. 

Playing

Kids take turns inviting another player over for dinner.  Each player is allowed one refusal for the game.  If the invited person accepts, then they go over to the the other’s house, and they compare cards.  If one of them eats the other, then the eaten player goes in ‘the cooking pot’ and waits for the conclusion of the game.  The other player keeps the card of the player that was eaten (this counts towards his ‘score’).  If they are animals that don’t eat each other, then they are now a party of 2.  This continues, until there are two or fewer dinner parties existing concurrently.  The largest party wins, with the exception that a player who has eaten more guests than the largest party will win.

A note on Rank:  Thee Wolf eats the fox, cat, bird, rabbit, and mouse.  The eagle eats the fox, cat, bird, rabbit and mouse.  The fox eats the cat, bird, rabbit, mouse.  Thee cat eats the bird, rabbit, mouse, the bird eats the ant and worm, the mouse and ant eat the cheese. 

Etiquette Variation

You can make the game more complicated by adding an etiquette rule.  For example, if the rabbit and mouse are at a party of 2, but they invite the cat, then the cat eats both of them.  But if the mouse and the ant are at a party, and the fox is invited, the fox would normally eat the mouse, but not the ant.  Therefore, it would be rude to eat the mouse in the presence of the ant, and so everyone is safe.  However, if the ant is then invited away from that party, and the fox and mouse are left alone, then etiquette goes out the window, and the mouse is instantly eaten, by the fox, and so goes to the cooking pot. 

Going Further

Once the kids have played a few rounds, they may want to draw their own cards, with their own animals. They can then play with their own cards

Other Notes

This game plays better with a lot of space, and will be less chaotic if there are clear areas for each dinner party.  A plane open area will just have kids wandering around. 

This isn’t necessarily a terrible thing, as you could have it as an open format, rather than turn-based, so that kids are wandering around getting invited to dinner and getting eaten now and the game then becomes avoiding certain people, and paying attention to who is getting eaten, and where. 

It also may be of use to give them ‘refusal’ tokens.  These tokens can be used to refuse an invitation -- when it is used, the person being refused then takes this token,  to be used later. 

[piscodickles]

King Rabbit

Overview:

This is a survival-type game, that is loosely based on the food chain.  The kids will have to be able to run, hide, search, and be alert.  You don’t need to play the “King Rabbit” variation, but you can always mix it in to keep things interesting.   The foxes are chasing the rabbits, and the wolves are chasing both the foxes and the rabbits. 

Each player will be given some number of ‘lives’, represented by their popsicle sticks.  When someone is tagged, they must give one of their popsicle sticks to the person that caught them.  

There will be ‘food and water’ (magic markers) hidden around the playground, that will count for points to all players. When they find one of the markers, they draw a line on their finger or hand to prove they found it.   

What You’ll Need: 

Some way to identify 3 different teams (you can use coloured hats, sashes, shirts, pinnies, or face paint)

A soccer-sized ball (for the King Rabbit Variation)

a bunch of popsicle sticks

a few magic markers

Getting Started: 

Hide the Resources:  I like to use the fat washable magic markers.  You can hide them before hand, or let the game begin and then hide them all in the early stages of the game.  I like to tell the kids that each colour is a different food (eg: the orange marker = carrots, green = lettuce, yellow = onions/bananas/corn, purple = grapes, red = watermelon/cherries/strawberries, blue = water).  Whenever they find a marker, they mark it on their hand, and put it back where they found it. 

If you plan to play multiple games, designate a specific hand or finger at the beginning of each game.  eg:  “for this game, when you find food, mark your left pinky finger!” The marking is their proof that they found a given resource in a given game. 

Because water is such an important resource, I like to put the water (blue marker) in an openly known area.  All the players know  where the water is, and that makes it extra risky to try and get it.  Note that a lot of kids will want the markers to be “safety zones” -- they are not.  They must be alert, and retrieve each resource when it is safe. 

Divide the kids into three groups:  rabbits, foxes, and wolves.  About a fifth of your kids should be wolves, another fifth as foxes, and the rest are rabbits.  With 15 kids, I like to have 2-3 wolves, 3-4 foxes, and 8-10 rabbits.  These kids should be easily identifiable to each other.  I like to have each animal having a different coloured hat, or shirt, or scarf (tucked into their pants or wrapped around their hand), but if you had a lot of time, they could be face-painted appropriately (they could even face-paint each other!)

Hand out the Popsicle Sticks.  A player should get one popsicle stick for each player that can catch them.  This number isn’t set in stone, but I like to play the rule where each wolf/fox is only allowed to catch each person once.  So, if you are playing a game with 3 foxes and 2 wolves, each rabbit gets 5 popsicle sticks (’lives’), and each fox gets 2 popsicle sticks.  Wolves are immune to attack, and so do not start with any popsicle sticks (although they will be collecting them). 

Other Considerations:

Some kids like to call a time out when they’re tired.  I don’t like to let them do this.  This is a game of cunning, speed, and endurance.  If they say they’re tired, then they should find a place to hide and rest.  Rabbits don’t get breaks, and neither do they.  Besides, the wolves and foxes worked hard to make them tired.  It’s only fair that they get a popsicle stick out of the deal.  

At the end of the game, the kids can add the number of popsicle sticks they  have left with the number of colours on their hand (resources found) which gives their final score (I don’t suggest you make a big deal of this.  For the most part, they are more happy to simply play another round than add up their scores.  But if you are playing for prizes or only have time for one round, it can be a fun addition). 

King Rabbit.  With the King Rabbit variant, you give a ball (should be a ball that is big enough that requires the kids to hold it with two hands) to one of the rabbits, and they are King:  they are immune to attack from the foxes and the wolves while they have the ball.  However, the rabbits can catch the King.  A rabbit that tags the King gets to have the ball and is the new King. 

Some of the kids wil figure out that the King is safer when he’s staying near the foxes and wolves -- the foxes and wolves will also realize that the King is excellent bait. 

You might also get a couple of good friends cooperating with the ball -- passing the ball to each other when they are in trouble.  Be sure to applaud their cooperation and creativity if their tactics progress to this point. 

A Note on Ecology

You might have a hard time relating King Rabbit to real ecological principles.  You don’t really have to, it’s just a fun game.  But if you’re one of those people that really wants to relate the rules ot the food chain, then you can consider the ball as something like a defendable territory, that only holds one individual, but permits its holder complete safety.  In this case, it maight be a network of warrens, that only one rabbit occupies at a time.  They are safe from predators, but if another rabbit is able to wrest it from their control, they’re out on their own again, like everyone else.