Playing conkers

Every autumn my girls collect conkers like mad! They are everywhere in their pockets, backpacks, their wooden house in the garden…I usually just end up throwing them out as soon as I find them but this time around daddy thought it will be good to teach our girls to play conkers.

My little one took a special interest in the conkers and you can of course see that from the pictures below…

Playing conkers

• Pick the best conkers that you have – they need to be uncracked and firm.
• Make a hole through the middle of your conkers – this needs to be completed by an adult – “daddy”
• Thread a strong piece of string, long enough for your child age – 20 – 20 cm long, through the hole and tie a knot at one end so it doesn’t pull through

• Each player should hold one conker hanging on it’s string and then take turns on hitting their opponent conker( but because by girls are quite little and they were hitting each other with them daddy thought it would be better to tie the string of one of the conkers to something – in this instance the handle of a bike. Like that my girls took turns on hitting that conker so the accidents were less.)

• In normal situations, if you are the first to hold the conker to be hit then you will need to leave it to hang down the string which is wrapped round your hand
• The conker need to be held at the height your opponent chooses and it needs to hold perfectly still.
• The striker needs to wrap his conker string round his hand – he then takes his conker in the other hand and draws it back for the strike.(you can see why this game is quite dangerous)
• When the striker releases the conker he swings it down by the string held in the other hand and tries to hit his opponents conker with it.
• If the player missed hitting his opponent conker than they are allowed up to two other goes.
• If the strings tangle, the first player to call “strings” gets an extra shot.
• If a player hits his/her opponents conker in such a way that it completes a whole circle after being hit – known as ‘round the world’ – the player gets another go.
• If a player drops his conker, or it is knocked out of his hand the other player can shout ‘stamps’ and jump on it; but should its owner first cry ‘no stamps’ then the conker, hopefully, remains intact.
• The game goes on in turns until one or other of the two conkers is completely destroyed.

As you can imagine my girls are just a tiny bit too young to play this game properly but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t have fun! They enjoyed playing in the garden with their daddy and they both believe that in the years to come they will become better at it.