Rainy Days and Family Fun

Rainy days, there's bound to be at least one during your vacation day at the beach.  I think families secretly crave them after days of crisping our skin under the sun.  They provide us with an excuse to escape to a movie or play a game together or, my favorite, peacefully settle around a jigsaw puzzle while listening to the pounding drops of a passing thunderstorm.

Leave it to the ingenuity of a dedicated teacher to invent what we now call the "jigsaw puzzle."  "For the purpose of teaching geography," John Spilsbury, a teacher in England, created the first jigsaw puzzle in the year 1767. Adhering his maps to flat hardwood, he used a fine saw to cut along the borders of the European countries, and the jigsaw puzzle was born (until the jigsaw was actually invented, however, this was called the "dissected puzzle.") Hand-painted and made of wood, the puzzle was a map of England and Wales, with each county making up a separate piece.

People actually seemed to enjoy this learning tool enough to begin creating jigsaw puzzles for entertainment.  The earliest known light-hearted puzzle was a 1785 depiction of John Gilpin's wild ride on a runaway horse from a comedic ballad by William Cowper.  None of these were interlocking, of course, until nearly a decade later when power tools were invented.

The first jigsaw puzzle for children, "The Smashed Up Locomotive," was designed by Milton Bradley in 1880.  By printing a lithograph of a steam engine locomotive and cutting it into pieces, the "smashed up" effect was achieved when a child opened the box and saw the locomotive all in pieces. Because of his Puritan upbringing, Bradley's nature was to seek order. Therefore, the object of the "The Smashed Up Locomotive" was to make the locomotive whole once again.

And I guess, maybe, that's why so many of us enjoy our "puzzle time" - it allows us a brief respite, one quiet moment to piece together a little jigsaw island of order in the sea of our crazy chaotic lives.

25 piece kids' puzzles and Springbok puzzles up to 2000 pieces available at

www.Bubbadah's Buys.com on eBay and Amazon

and www.Bubstoys.com

Summer Games - Monster's Ball Bonanza

This is a great game for 4 or more kids to play in a swimming pool!  All you need is 3 or more beach balls. (Try to maintain a “3 balls” to “4 kids” ratio for this game. For example: 6 kids = 4 balls, 8 students = 6 balls etc.)

Make sure you have everyone except one child, called "the Monster," go to the same end of the pool. The Monster gets all the beach balls.

The objective is for the kids in the pool to make it to the other end of the pool without getting hit by the balls the Monster is throwing. On “go,” they must swim to the other end of the pool. If they choose to swim underwater, they must surface at least twice. This gives the Monster a fair chance as he/she throws balls at them.

Once the Monster throws all of the balls, he can't get them out of the pool until everyone gets to the other end of the pool. When the Monster hits one of the swimmers with a ball, they must get out of the pool and become a Monster in the next round, and help him/her in the next round. Play until there is only one child left in the pool, and that person is the winner.

Make this game even more exciting by playing at night with Swimways Light Up Beach Ball! 

Available at Bubbadah's Buys on Amazon

(These are awesome for those outdoor summer concerts too!)