Giant Pick Up Sticks

How To Play Giant Pick Up Sticks

So you've all heard of pick-up sticks right? The game where you get a pile of multi-coloured sticks all mixed up and each player takes it in turn to pick up a stick without touching or moving any of the other sticks. If they pick it up successfully and cleany (without moving anything else) - they get some points (depending on the colour) and get to attempt to pick up another stick.

My idea for this group game is to do a giant version of it. It's possible to buy pre-prepared giant versions of this game (See here) but it could be a fun idea to make your own set. You'll probably just need a bunch of cheap dahl wood or plastic sticks and some coloured paint. A typical pick up sticks set contains 50 sticks.

You'll need to make a scoring system for this outdoor group game also. Could be something like this:

Red 5
Blue 4
Yellow 3
Green 2
White 1

Often players are allowed to use a "tool" to help them pick up a stick. This could be just another stick (coloured black) or something else.

JACK STRAWS VARIATION
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A similar game to pick-up sticks, called "Jack Straws", could also be played in this "giant mode". Jack Straws is played in the same format but has a collection of real life objects to pick up (like crutches, brooms, rakes, canes - anything that's long... see here) Wouldn't it be cool to get a collection of rakes, brooms, shovels and other random objects of a similar size and play Giant Jack Straws?!

Jack Straws gives each player a stick with a hook on the end to use to help them pull out an object without moving anything else. Again, different objects are worth different amounts of points.

Variants

• Giant Bowling
• Giant Twister

Added by
Joel
on 24 November 2010