The Straw Game

Children love this team game, which takes a fair amount of skill and concentration (and puff!) There are at least two different ways to play it...

Age: 5+

You will need:

Half the number of bowls as you have players, plus 2 extra
A plastic straw for each player and a few spare
M&Ms, Smartees, or other small candy (sweets)

How to play:

Divide the children into 2 teams. Place the bowls in 2 lines opposite each other (either along the length of a table or on the ground), with a straw next to each bowl. In the first bowl in each line place a number of M&Ms or other sweets, appropriate for the age of your children - approximately 15-20. (NB please don't use sweets which have nuts in them unless you are absolutely sure that none of the children at the party have a nut allergy).

The children each stand or kneel by a bowl. There will be one spare bowl at the end of the line. At your signal the first player begins to transfer the sweets, one by one, from their bowl to the next bowl along, using only their straw. Absolutely no hands are allowed, even if a sweet is dropped! The next player begins to transfer the sweets as soon as they arrive in his bowl into the next one, and so on down the line until all the sweets arrive in the final bowl, at which point that team is declared the winners.

Variation:

This version works with unequal numbers of children and requires less props and less space - and takes more time. It is fun for a mixed age group of children, in which case try and distribute the children fairly and make sure that the older kids encourage the younger ones, who will be quite a lot slower at the game! Have two bowls per team.

One player starts by transferring the sweets from one bowl to the next. When all the sweets are transferred, the next player comes up and transfers them back.... and so on, until the last player ha transferred all the sweets. If you have uneven teams, one player can go twice.