The games we played and the stories we told as kids are part of our fondest memories of childhood. These activities represent our culture, teaching lessons to the younger generations, and show how children understand the world they live in. Share a childhood family tradition, activity, rhyme, joke, game, ghost story, etc. that is unique to your country and/or culture (Include pictures, the story, instructions, etc.). Explain what it is and why this is important to you and/or your culture. Do it Yourself! Add it to the comments below! 

What are Your Kid Activities and Stories?

Anna, University of Oregon, Nursing Major (transfer), Undergraduate Student:

Especially on my dad’s side of the family, card games are a big hit. I remember growing up, always playing games with decks of cards like, Hand and Foot, Garbage (also known as Junk Poker), Dice, Uno, but a favorite amongst my family and cousins is Peanuts. My aunt was the first to teach me and my cousins are still the best players I know. Peanuts is a fast-paced card game that can be played with a minimum of 2-3 people and I wouldn’t more than 5. It’s basically a mix between Solitaire and Skip Bo. Everyone has their own deck of standard playing cards, with different back designs. In front of each person, you have a pile of 13 cards (all face down with the top one up) and four more face up alongside your pile. 

The objective of the game is to score points by playing cards into the middle foundation piles. Each round is over when a player plays all the cards from his/her pile of 13 and announces peanuts. 

The foundation piles are formed in the middle of all players, with each pile being open to any player. The foundation piles are started with aces and can be built on with the next card in rank of the same suit. Cards are ranked from ace to king. Once a foundation pile reaches the king, it can be flipped over. 

The four cards face up in a horizontal line are known as the building piles. Each player can only play on his/her building piles, as you would when playing Solitaire. Building piles can be played on by a card with one less rank and opposite color. For example, a black 8 is played on a red 9. The top card of a building pile can be used to play onto a middle foundation pile throughout the game. When a building pile is empty, a card from the peanuts pile or the deck can be moved to the open space. 

The remaining deck for each player is also used to play cards from. Every third card is revealed and, if possible, can be played onto a middle foundation pile or a player’s building piles. Once the deck is exhausted, the waste pile can be picked up and flipped through again. The pile of 13 cards is known as the peanuts pile. At the start of the game, the top card of each player’s peanut pile is flipped up. The top card can be played onto a middle foundation pile or the player’s building piles. Once a player has played all the cards from his peanut pile, he/she can announce “peanuts.” This stops all play, and the round is over. 

After each round, the cards in the middle are sorted by each deck. Each card a player was able to play onto a middle foundation pile is worth one point, and two points are subtracted from that total for each card still in a player’s peanut pile at the end of a round. You can have either negative or positive points, based on how many you played in the center piles. The first player to 100 points wins the game. Here are some additional rules and tips: 

  • Players do not take turns during game play but rather play their cards as fast as they can. 
  • A player is only allowed to move one card at a time. 
  •  Although a player may have an open move, that player is not required to make a move. 
  • A player may continue to make moves after his peanuts pile has been played. The round is only over when a player with an empty peanuts pile announces “peanuts.” 
  • If multiple players play the same card onto a foundation pile, the player who got his card to the pile first wins the tie. The other player must return his card to its origin. 
  • If all players in the game are stuck with no available moves, the top card of each player’s deck is moved to the bottom of the deck, and play continues. 
  • The more players in the game, the more difficult the game play becomes.

Rose, University of Oregon, Nonprofit Management Graduate Student with a Certificate of Museum Studies:

For my kids activity I am going to share something that was very popular among the children of my age group when we were in about 3rd and 4th grade so age 9 and 10. I am not sure how well known it was outside of the U.S. but I always heard that it came from Hawaii originally. The tradition is a game and a collectable toy called “Pogs” and they were originally milk bottle tops with pictures on them that kids started collecting in Hawaii which then became monetized and popularized as a trading and collecting game. There were regular pogs with pictures on them, usually of popular T.V. and movie characters, and sometimes abstract designs. Then there were slightly thicker pogs called flippers, (sometimes made of thicker cardboard and sometimes made of thin plastic), which you used to flip the regular pogs to try to displace your opponent’s pogs from the circle. The game was kind of like marbles where each player would bet a pog of a certain value and toss it into the circle if the opponent could dislodge one of their opponent’s pogs from the circle they could win that pog. The final kind of pog was called a “slammer” this was a heavy pog, usually made out of plastic, which was used to slam down into the midst of the pogs in the circle to attempt to cause a pog to fly out of the circle. Each turn you could bet, flip or slam. If you bet, your opponent had to bet a pog of equal or higher value. There were numerous rules that were unique to each school yard and often each game. The players had to agree to the rules before the beginning of the match or a fight would inevitably ensue. The most important rule to establish at the beginning, as with all childhood games which involve betting, was whether you were playing for “keeps” or not. Failing to determine this important detail could cause terrible rifts in friendships. I didn’t play pogs all that often, but I did collect them. There were pog tubes that were sold alongside the pogs themselves and some kids had tubes that were a meter or longer. These tubes were used to store pogs and were a bit of a status symbol. Mine was only about 8 inches long. I did trade sometimes but I was a low status kid, so I mostly traded with my brother and sister. Pogs faded from grade school playgrounds when schools began outlawing them because they were considered gambling, really it was just an excuse to get rid of the things that were causing so much trouble on the playground and so many disputes which ended in tears.

Jeremya, University of Oregon, Folklore and Public Culture Undergraduate Student:

My family and I would go hunting for mushrooms together in the winter. I have fond memories of being a child, and searching for chanterelles in the Oregon woods. I always trusted my father to know where he was going and lead us the right way. I have developed a strong connection to the land, growing up in Oregon. My parents raised me to respect all living things and to spend time in nature.

Ștefania Cîșlariu, Romania Student:

Hello everyone! 

  I have a very interesting legend for you! It’s about a bridge, really close to our town. I know it seems boring, but is actually pretty cool.

  It’s called “God’s Bridge”. This bridge is what’s left from Peștera Podului (Bridge’s Cave) roof. Is Romania’s longest natural bridge and the second one from Europe (about 98 feet long), and is the only one in the entire world that you can drive on . I think that’s pretty amazing!

  Anyways, the legend it’s how it earned this name, because the official name is Podul Natural de la Ponoarele (The Natural Bridge from Ponoarele), but everybody knows it as “God’s Bridge”. So.. It is said that in this cave used to live the devil. The people around were frightened and were always praying to God to banish him or make him disappear, so they could live their life in peace. After so many prayers, one day, God hit the roof of the cave with his hand and so the roof fell down, blocking the entrance of the cave, but the devil found his way out, escaping through the back and grabbed the top of a hill with his claws. After that, the devil would have climbed on a cliff, now known as “The Devil Cliff”.

  I hope you found this interesting, because I sure do! And I also hope somehow this legend helped you to get to know Romania a little bit better!

Diana Ghita, Romania Student:

Romania is literally the land of mistery and myths, I must share this one with you, which is extremly popular and in my opinion, a very interesting one to tell.

      I must mention that it is not from our town, but the place where it comes from is nearby, in the County of Argeș.

     The legend tells us the story of Master builder Manole, the chief architect of the “Curtea de Argeș Monastery” and the bizarre construction process of the cathedral.

      The ruler back then, Negru Vodă, asked Master Manole (the best master at the time) and his 9 helping men to build him the most beautiful cathedral that anyone has ever seen. They tried to do as told, but every night the walls built during the day would crumble and fall to pieces. Negru Vodă threatened Manole and his 9 men with death if they won’t be able to finish the building.

     One night, Master Manole had a dream in which he was showed that the way of making the cathedral stand and resist is to build one of the craftmen’s wives into its walls. He then went to his helping men and told them about the dream and they all agreed to do it but they all promised to eachother not to tell their wives about it so that the next day when all the women came as usual to bring food for their husbands, the first one who arrives shall be the one sacrificed. That way it would have been a fair shot for everybody and whoever of the wives comes first….well bad luck for her…

      Of course, Master Manole was the only one not to tell his wife about it, the other workers did, and so, his wife, Ana was the first and only to come the next morning…oh and she was also pregnant.

       They took her, tricked her into thinking that it was just a game and pretended to joke about building her into the wall. She fell for it, but when she realised that it wasn’t just a joke anymore, she begged and begged for her husband’s mercy but he went on with it, and built her into the cathedral’s wall. He was broken, literally torn apart to do it, but he did it. The dream turned out to be true, and the walls didn’t crumble anymore.

        They finished the cathedral and Negru Vodă asked the workes as they were still on the roof of the building : “Would you be able to build another one more beautiful than this one?”. They said yes, and because of that, Negru Vodă stranded them on the roof with no way to climb down, so that they would never build another better than his own.

          The workers crafted wings out of wood leftover found on the roof to fly back down but they all died and where Master Manole fell, it is now built a fountain.

           In time, this legend became one of our fundamental myths, the myth of sacrifice for creation, whose message is that nothing can withstand time if it’s not spirited through sacrifice.

           I’ll attach bellow photos of the Curtea de Argeș Monastery, the wall where Ana is supposed to be in and the fountain. Hope you found this legend interesting