Mancala

I remember playing Mancala with my brother and sister back in the brown and orange corduroy, nothing on TV, make-your-own-fun days of the seventies. In those days we played with cowrie shells on a wooden board, my children have a plastique version with coloured glass pebbles, but the game is still the same. It's been the same for thousands of years.

It's the perfect pre-bed game, each round takes 5mins tops, it's a game of chance not skill so no one cries, you can't cheat, you often draw, and it's ever so relaxing just picking up the smooth shiny pebbles and dropping them down, picking them up, dropping them down ..