Activities & Days Out / 25 August, 2020 / Nanny Anita

DIY Counter Top Shuffleboard

If you have ever been on a cruise then you are bound to have found a shuffleboard on one of the open decks. It is a great game to play, and if you have never played it, it is sort of like curling but without the ice.

When I thought about setting this up for EC and YC to play I did think about doing it across the floor, but decided that the surface of the work surface would be better as it provided less resistance.

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You will need:

• A flat surface like a wooden floor
• Jam jar lids
• Masking tape
• A broom or swiffer (optional)

To set up your shuffleboard you need to set your masking tape up like this.

The Rules

There are many different rules depending on where you come from but we went with the simple rules that I learnt on the cruise ship, but slightly adapted them for children.

Each team gets the same amounts of pucks (jam jar lids), we did 4 each. Then use the cue (broom/swiffer) to push the puck down towards the triangle. As we did these on a work surface we didn’t use a cue.

When one person has gone the other person can go, and they can use their pucks to hit off their opponents ones.

At the end you count up the points of where your pucks have landed. They should be completely within the lines to actually count, but again to make it easier for YC and EC we ignored that particular rule. If your puck lands in the 10 OFF area, then you take 10 points off your score.

The first person to reach 75 points is the winner. We counted the marks up and who ever had the most of that round won a point. The first person to reach 5 points won.

YC and EC were very competitive, and it was interesting to see them try to hit each others pucks off rather than try and score. They were also really good at adapting the force they used on each puck, especially if they sent one flying off the end before hand.

We left our shuffleboard out for a few days so that we could play over and over again.

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