Pick-Up Sticks

This is a fun game for any number of players, and good for a pre-meeting activity. You can buy a set of pick-up sticks, but it's fun to make one at home, with ordinary bamboo skewers -- the kind you use for shish kebabs -- and Sharpie permanent markers.

You will need:

• 30 bamboo skewers
• permanent markers in black, red, blue, green, and yellow
• medium- or fine-grade sandpaper
  
  Run the sandpaper lightly along the sides of the skewers to remove any splinters or rough spots, and sand the tips so that they are not sharp.
  
  Color the top two inches or so of the flat end of the skewers in the following quantities: 1 black, 7 red, 7 blue, 8 green, and 7 yellow. If you'd rather, you can color the whole skewer.
  
  How to play: With all of the sticks in one hand, set them up on end on the table, and let them fall gently into a pile. The first player tries to pick up one stick without making any of the other sticks move. If she can do it, she gets to try for another stick, but when she makes a stick move, her turn is over. (The girls will quickly learn that the best "piles" are those that are nicely spread out but not too easy!) The game can be played using the black stick as a tool to winkle out another stick, or with the black stick included in the pile as the high-scoring stick. The winner is the girl with the most points at the end.
  
  The black stick scores 25 points; red is 10 points each; blue is 5 points each; green is 2 points each; yellow is 1 point each.