Playing with Haikubes

playing with haikubes

together we build with words

search for the meaning

________________________

A game called Haikubes

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Hide-and-seek

the counting starts

either you have a count

to hide or you have

a waiting count eyes closed

the numbers set the pace

all participants know the rules

no cheating

ready or not here I come

sometimes the hidden ones

are never found

olly olly oxen free

the call of surrender

giving up hope

the seeker’s defeat

 

 

Summer of Pirates

 

It was the summer of pirates

Jolly Roger crew

set sail on the high seas

of Iowa grassland

 

Swords and muskets drawn

we plundered and raved

under the pirate’s flag

leaping from ship to shore

from the  old Navy cot

to the Walker’s rockery

 

I was captain

my two year old sister

the happy stowaway

content to sit on the meandering vessel

while others walked the plank

at my command 

 

We sailed for days

There was no treasure

only a map

tucked in my pirate belt

that led us in search of that

which we knew not

Black Jack

Dad played the cards in his living room like he was in Vegas.  Teaching me Black Jack, always taking the card, take the risk when it really doesn’t matter.  No bets were made, no strategy, just seeing where the cards would fall.  As far as I know Dad never made it to Vegas.  He got drunk and played the game in the Vegas of his arm chair.  Jack, Ace, played up in hearts.  Dad taught me to play the cards.  He never taught me to gamble.  I could shuffle like a pro, deal fast, build to 21, make the split.  He always saw two nines instead of eighteen.  Double the risk, shuffle and cut, play the cards out.  Study and watch the cards fall, high roller from his living room Caesar’s Palace.  At times he would even shoot craps.

Button Box

Gramma’s button box

all kinds and colors

mixed up and marvelous

group of six

or pairs identical

laid out on the sewing table

where little hands

put all in a line

mess them up

or count and rhyme

this one is blue

a pair bright yellow

three small and purple

four red umbrellas

or five green with turtles

fun game for tots

Old Authors and a New Game

Forty four cards in the deck. There are eleven portraits of authors and each has four titles per author. The game is to try to collect all four titles for each author to make a book. Player with the most books wins. I always wanted to draw the card of Louisa May Alcott the only woman in the deck.

Here’s a new game. Match the quote with the author and the title of the book that the quote came from.

Quote
Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?

Words, words, words.

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you.

A man without conscience is but a poor creature………

Others may write from the head, but he writes from the heart, and the heart will always understand him.

What other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!

For his heart was in his work, and the heart giveth grace unto every art.

God of Jacob! It is the meeting of two fierce tides – the conflict of two oceans moved by adverse winds!

For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.

Authors
Henry Longfellow Washington Irving Alfred Tennyson

Nathaniel Hawthorne James Fenimore Cooper Mark Twain

William Shakespeare Sir Walter Scott Louisa May Alcott

Charles Dickens Robert Louis Stevenson

Titles
Pathfinder The Legend of Sleepy Hollow The Brook

The House of the Seven Gables Song of Hiawatha Ivanhoe

Treasure Island Little Women Oliver Twist

Tom Sawyer Hamlet

Play the game without googling or binging or anything else. Just use your literary skills. If you match a quote to the correct author you get one point. If you match the quote to the title you get one point. If you get the title to the author you get a point. If you are correct with the quote, the title and the author you get all three points.

33 points You are the champion of the game and not only do you know the authors and the titles but also the literary style, famous line or theme of each writer.

22 to 32 points You really know your old authors even some that seem obscure to most people today.

11 to 21 points You no doubt have knowledge of these authors and can put two and two together on some occasions.

0 to 10 points Time to study up on your dead poets and authors.