Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children

Number 214

The Game of Monopoly

 

Hello Everyone

 

 

Our family very often meets up at Auntie Alice’s cottage on a Sunday for lunch, and sometimes afterwards we play board games.

 

Any game with playing cards or dice helps children to practise using numbers.

 

And board games are very fashionable nowadays because they get people away from screens and bring them together with friends and family.

 

One of Bill and Bob’s favourite games is Monopoly.  They love playing it so that they can pretend to be big tycoons.  They say they want to be millionaires one day so it is good practice for them.

 

You might play this game yourself; it is one of the most popular board games in the world.

 

The story of how it was invented is a really interesting – and heart-warming one.

 

Back in the 1930s, the American economy was in really bad shape.  This period in history is called ‘The Great Depression’.  Many people had lost their jobs. They had no money to buy food so had to go to places called soup kitchens where they were fed by charities.

 

Millions of men were out of work and amongst them was one Charles Darrow who had lost his job as a salesman in 1929.

 

He had a wife and son to look after, but although he looked for work for many months he could not find anything.

 

With little else to do he tried inventing things, but nobody was interested in his inventions either.

 

Darrow and his wife often thought about happier times when they had had money and gone to Atlantic City, a town on the coast, for holidays.

 

Then Darrow had an idea.

 

Darrow recreated this seaside town by drawing the streets of Atlantic City on the oil cloth that covered his kitchen table.  He also drew the railway stations and the electricity and water companies as well.

 

Then he cut out tiny models of houses and hotels from scraps of wood that he found.

 

He made cards and lots of play money.  Then he found two dice and some buttons to use as tokens.

 

He showed his wife the game he had invented.  They could pretend to not only go back to the seaside town that they loved so much – but buy it too!

 

He called his game Monopoly.

 

He secured a copyright for it in 1933 and was granted a patent for it by the U.S. Patent Office in 1935.  That means that his idea could not be copied by other people.

 

The game made Charles Darrow very rich.  He didn’t have to worry about finding work again.  He became a gentleman farmer in Pennsylvania and was able to travel all over the world in comfort and style.

 

The company who made the game and sold it to shops, Parker Brothers, also became a major company on the profits.

 

The game has been translated into many languages.  lt is sold in countries all over the world.  The British version of the game has the streets of London on it but other countries have their own versions.

 

Mono means ‘one’.  Monopoly means that a person or a company has a sole right to own something or have the right to sell something because they have complete control over it.

 

ln the game of monopoly, a player can, by using a bit of strategy and with also perhaps a lot of luck, end up dominating all the other players as he or she collects a lot of money and property.

 

Bill and Bob take it very seriously – in fact they are ruthless!

 

 

Bye bye everyone – don’t forget to subscribe to my blog!

 

lf you like my blog, please support it by telling all your friends and followers about it.

 

Thank you!

 

And see you again next Fun Friday!

 

Love and kisses

 

 

Salty Sam

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www.christina-sinclair.com

 

 

 

Bill and Bob’s Joke of the Weekjokejoke

 

Bob: Did you hear about the farmer’s boy who hated the countryside so much he went to the big city to find a job?

 

Bill: No, what happened to him?

 

Bob: Well, the only job he could find was as a shoe shine boy.  So the farmer made hay while the son shone!

 

 

Salty Sam © Christina Sinclair 2015

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of material from this blog without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited.

Links may be used to www.christina-sinclair.com

 

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Picture Gallery

 

Charles Darrow

 

Atlantic City today

 

The board

 

The concept

 

Hotels and houses are now made of plastic

 

 

 

Game pieces

 

 

 

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  desk   THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESKdesk

coffee

 

Well, the evenings are getting lighter now, aren’t they?

Spring is around the corner, and the tourist attractions in Rocky are getting ready to welcome our summer visitors.

The population of Rocky Bay swells enormously when summer comes.

The holiday-makers come in their droves of course, but there are also a lot of people who come here just to work for the season.

Extra help is needed all over town.

A lot of these workers are students looking for jobs during their summer holidays.

There are some local youngsters who get first pickings though.

There is one particular group of them who when they got to ‘university age’ didn’t go off to university.

Instead, they decided to stay at home to save money, get a part-time job to earn money and study on an Open University course at home to get a degree.

Of course. not going to university meant that they did not have the social life you find there, so they decided they would start their own student club here in Rocky Bay.

They study and work all week and then at weekends go surfing, put on plays and shows or sit outside the Rusty Anchor in the sunshine and chat.

When they get jobs at the Rocky Bay Fun World over the summer they meet people of all ages from all over the country and even all over the world.

When the get their degrees they won’t have any student debt at all.

Clever, huh?

Bill and Bob are too young to get holiday jobs of course, but they always find plenty of things to amuse themselves.

I sometimes think that Bill and Bob have a killer instinct when it comes to playing games.

They love playing Monopoly and they often play Scrabble as well – especially at Auntie Alice’s house.

She usually wins and so they decided to have some new words up their sleeves to astound and impress her – and maybe even beat her for once as well!

So they spent one evening last week looking through their dictionary trying to find words they thought would be useful to them.

They looked for words that were short and could fit into small spaces around other words and also words with letters that are usually difficult to use in words.

 

These are the ones they found for z – and there will be some more words next week…

Do you know any of them?

 

  1. Zax – an instrument used for cutting slates
  2. Zebu – a humped ox from India
  3. Zend – an ancient language from Iran
  4. Zest – the skin of a citrus fruit
  5. Zip – a clothes fastening
  6. Zinky – like zinc or containing zinc
  7. Zircon – a mineral
  8. Zonule – a small zone
  9. Zoold – resembling an animal
  10. Zoon – an animal
  11. Zouave – a French soldier
  12. Zymic – pertaining to fermentation

 

 

zax

 

Zebu

 

Zuoaves

 

 

chair

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Quick Quiz

 

This blog is read in many countries.

Do you know where you can find these capital cities?

 

  1. Prague
  2. Addis Ababa
  3. Berlin
  4. Kuala Lumpur
  5. Santiago
  6. Kiev
  7. Abu Dhabi
  8. Belgrade
  9. Lisbon
  10. Bridgetown
  11. Budapest
  12. Montevideo
  13. Washington DC
  14. Cairo
  15. Doha
  16. Oslo
  17. Moscow
  18. Amsterdam
  19. Nairobi
  20. Hanga Roa
  21. Jakarta
  22. Nassau
  23. Tallinn
  24. Manila
  25. Helsinki
  26. Copenhagen
  27. Athens
  28. Tirana
  29. Zagreb
  30. Windhoek

 

Parliament – Bridgetown

 

 

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lt’s the Weekend!

 

HOW TO MAKE A BlTS AND PlECES TRAY

If you have lots of bits and pieces that you use when you are sewing that keep dropping on the floor and getting lost, this is the perfect tray to use to get yourself organized.

It can also be used to hold jewellery of hairclips.

 

You will need 3 sheets of 7 mesh 10.5 by 13.5 inches/26.7 by 34.3 cm.

 

 

You will need to cut the following panels:-

 

2 bases 46 by 69 holes

4 outer sides 69 by 8 holes

4 outer ends 46 by 8 holes

 

Inner divisions

 

2 pieces 69 by 8 holes

4 pieces 22 by 8 holes

 

  1. Using yellow dk yarn sew 2 lines of tent stitch around one of the base pieces
  2. The other base will have no embroidery on it
  3. Sew 1 line of tent stitches using white dk yarn into a box 18 stitches by 18 stitches in the corners of one side then another box the same size between them
  4. Sew 1 line of ten stitches using white yarn into a long box 18 stitches wide on the other side of the base
  5. Fill the 4 boxes in with tent stitch using alternate colours of pale orange and pale green
  6. Fill the gap between the boxes with tent stitches using yellow yarn
  7. Cover the sides and ends with tent stitches – green and orange on 4 and just yellow on 4
  8. Cover the inner divisions with tent stitches using yellow yarn
  9. Sew the sides together in their pairs along the tops using white dk yarn (with wrong sides together)
  10. Sew the inner divisions together in their pairs along the tops and ends using white dk yarn (with wrong sides together)
  11. Stitch along the bottom of the inner divisions and base to hold them in place
  12. Sew the bottom of the sides and ends to the two base panels at the same time
  13. Sew up the corners
  14. Put a stitch in the tops of the corners where the inner divisions meet each other and the side walls to keep them rigid

This project will take a long time to do but it is easy to put down and pick up and do in stages.

You may need help with the construction from an adult, if you find it too fiddly.

 

 

Please note that the material on this blog is for personal use and for use in classrooms only.

It is a copyright infringement and, therefore, illegal under international law to sell items made with these patterns.

Use of the toys and projects is at your own risk.

©Christina Sinclair Designs 2015sand

 

 

Quick Quiz Answers

 

  1. Prague – Czech Republic
  2. Addis Ababa – Ethiopia
  3. Berlin – Germany
  4. Kuala Lumpur – Malaysia
  5. Santiago – Chile
  6. Kiev – Ukraine
  7. Abu Dhabi – The United Arab Emirates
  8. Belgrade – Serbia
  9. Lisbon – Portugal
  10. Bridgetown – Barbados
  11. Budapest – Hungary
  12. Montevideo – Uruguay
  13. Washington DC – The United States
  14. Cairo – Egypt
  15. Doha – Qatar
  16. Oslo – Norway
  17. Moscow – Russia
  18. Amsterdam – Netherlands
  19. Nairobi – Kenya
  20. Hanga Roa – Easter lsland  
  21. Jakarta – lndonesia
  22. Nassau – Bahamas
  23. Tallinn – Estonia
  24. Manila – Philippines
  25. Helsinki – Finland
  26. Copenhagen – Denmark
  27. Athens – Greece
  28. Tirana – Albania
  29. Zagreb – Croatia
  30. Windhoek – Namibia

 

How many did you know?

 

Nassau

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