Five kampung games worth teaching your kids

Before phones, a Malaysian afternoon ran on whatever was lying around. Seeds, stones, sticks, rope and a patch of open ground. Plenty of those games are still great, and most cost nothing to start.

Congkak

A wooden board with two rows of small holes and a larger "home" hole at each end. Players scoop up the seeds, marbles or shells from a hole on their side and drop them one at a time around the board, trying to fill their own home hole. Slow to explain, quick to get competitive.

Batu seremban

Five small stones or little cloth beanbags. Toss one into the air, grab the others from the ground before it lands, and catch it again. Each round asks for a little more, so it goes from easy to surprisingly hard.

Galah panjang

A team game played on a grid of lines drawn on the ground. One team guards the lines and the other tries to run through and back without being tagged. All you need is chalk or a stick, and enough space to run.

Gasing

Traditional spinning tops. A rope is wound around the top and pulled hard to throw it spinning, and contests are often about whose top keeps spinning longest. Gasing is especially associated with Kelantan and Terengganu.

Wau

Malaysian kites, and a lovely reason to go outside when there is wind. The best known is the crescent-shaped wau bulan from Kelantan. A simple kite takes an afternoon to make.

And one more

The sixth game is the one we built our whole game around: baling selipar.