Think Crafts Blog - Craft Ideas and Projects - CreateForLess

Blog Contributor, Crafty Mom and Writer, Gillian, from the Blog “Dried Figs and Wooden Spools”.

Somehow, this year I’ve been roped into being the den mother for my son’s Wolf Scout Den, or pack, or whatever it is. I should probably figure that out since I’m now in charge. The fact that my son is even in Scouts was a coup for my husband in the first place. Last year, when he joined I didn’t really want yet another thing to do in the evenings, but my husband was adamant. Every boy should be a scout, ours included, so a scout he became.

As far as how I became a den mother, well, I’m actually not sure, but here I am, in charge of ten 7 year old boys once a week. This week was our first meeting of the school year and to kick things off we decided to work on sportsmanship and teamwork and woodworking skills. In other words, we were going to build a Washers game.

Now the first thing I should tell you is that I’ve never played washers in my life. In fact, I had never even heard of Washers until we moved to Virginia. Either it’s a Southern thing or it’s just not something that happened in my family. And considering the fact that my family is the most anti-sports family around, they are both good possibilities. In any case, I’ve HEARD a lot about Washers, and it seemed like a simple thing to make, and a good game for a bunch of rowdy second graders to play.

As it turns out, a Washers set is an easy thing to build and a fun thing to play. So fun, in fact, that we’ve decided to play it at the beginning of our meetings every week. It also just might become a permanent feature in our back yard.

Learning woodworking skills!

To build a Washers set you will need enough plywood to make two squares roughly 17 inches on each side. We used 1/8″ plywood because we had it around and it was easy to work with, but whatever you can get your hands on would be just fine. And the dimensions are approximate, if you can find a 30 inch piece of plywood, make two 15 inch squares, 40 inch piece and you dont want to cut things down, go for 20 inch squares. The main things is that there is enough room on the inside to catch at least some of the washers.

Next cut 2×4″s or 2×2″s (we used 2×2″s to make it shallower and easier for the boys) to make a square lip around the plywood. Nail through the plywood and into the bottom of the lip so you won’t have nails sticking up then flip the whole thing over and glue a 4 inch tall piece of PVC pipe in the center using Liquid Nails or another construction adhesive (this is a step that should definitely be done by an adult!) The diameter of the pipe is up to you, we used a three inch coupling segment because it was big enough to catch a few washers and came pre-cut in the plumbing section of the hardware store. Once you have the boards nailed and the pipes glued, make another just like the first so you have a matched set. When the glue has set, or set enough, it’s time to play. Pull out your bag of washers and get throwing!

According to washers.org, the game boards should stand 25 feet apart, but if you’re playing with seven year olds, ten is probably the max, at least until they’ve gotten some practice time in.  Players stand at opposite boards and throw two washers each into their home board. A washer in the cup scores 5 points, the closest washer to the cup but in the box scores 1 point. There are some complicated rules about scores counting each other out and if you feel like playing that way, by all means, read up on that. But for our purposes, we just kept a running tab for two teams and let the boys play. And that’s the beauty of the game, if you want a serious game, that can be arranged, if you want to keep ten squirmy seven year olds busy for half an hour, it will do the job, and if you want to sit in your lawn chair and chuck washers into the box to see who gets up to get the next round of drinks, well, that works too.