Item-no.:
22378
This game is
great fun and at the same time it trains shape and colour recognition and
encourages co-operation and language development. The 36 wooden animals can
also be used singly or together for creative play.
Age: 4+
Number of players: 2-4
Contents: 4 pastures
4 cotton bags
36 different wooden animals
1 game cloth
Game
idea: Dieter
Gebhardt
Illustration: Hermien Stellmacher
Once a week the village square in Jokingham bustles
with activity as all the children in the neighbourhood come with their many
animals to take part in the great animal auction. And what a lot of confusion
and noise there is as the donkey’s “hee-haw” drowns out the cow’s “moo”, the
pigs grunt, the frogs croak, the cocks crow their “cock-a-doodle-doo” and the
cats join in the “choir” with their meowing.
Despite this cacophony you have to pay close attention
at the auction because only the quickest to react will be able to bring the
animals he buys into the right pens on the pasture ground.
Game preparation:
The cloth is the village square and is laid down in
the centre of the table within easy reach of all players. The animals are
distributed in any order but in equal numbers to all players. Each player is
also given a pasture and a cotton bag to put the animals into.
Rules of the game:
Each player reaches into his bag and picks out any
animal without looking at it.
The youngest child calls out “All animals onto the
square” and on the word “square" each player places the animal he has
pulled out into the “village square".
If at least 2 animals are the same, each child calls
out the animal’s sound as quickly as possible.
For example, the first child to call out “meow” if
there are 2 cats on the village square at the same time, has succeeded in
“buying” all the animals standing there and can take them all.
Now one of each pair of double animals is placed into
the pen on the pasture. There is one pen for each variety of animal. The
remaining animals are put back into the bag.
The game continues with the next auction round and the
next player may call out “All animals onto the square"
If there are no doubles on the village square, the
animals cannot be auctioned. They stay where they are and more animals must be
pulled out of the bags now and put on the village square when the command is
given. Here too, the person who is the loudest in making the sound of the
animal that is there twice is the one who succeeds in “buying” them.
If two children call out simultaneously, the “bought”
animals are divided between them.
If there is an uneven number, the last animal remains
standing on the village square.
End of the game: The winner
is the first player to fill the pasture ground with all animal varieties, i.e.
he must have bought at least one of each animal.
If a child has no animals left in the bag, he can
participate in the next auction round. If he does not succeed in winning any
new animals, the game ends and the winner is the one with the most animals
standing on his pasture ground.
To encourage cooperation, another variant of the game
can be played in which a player with several animals in a pen on the pasture
ground can swap the animals he has double with the neighbour on his left or
right for animals he doesn’t have yet, providing the neighbour has these animals
twice.
Have a lot of fun at the merry animal auction on the
village square in Jokingham!