Pooh Sticks

Have you ever heard of Winnie The Pooh? He is a very famous bear in books the teddy bears have been reading recently, written by the author, A A Milne. Winnie the Pooh had lots of adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood with his pals Eeyore (a donkey), Tigger (a tiger) and Piglet (a piglet!) Almost like the adventures the bears have with their pals!

In one of the books Winnie and his pals play a game called 'Pooh Sticks' and the bears thought it sounded such good fun they wanted to try it too.

You can do it on any bridge over a stream or small river, as long as the water flows underneath. So the bears found themselves a stone bridge over a little river on a quiet country lane near where they live. It was safest to have an adult with them too, so Jane kindly agreed to come with them and make sure they were safe on the bridge and near the water.

The rules are simple: each player finds a stick, and then you all drop your sticks, at the same time, on the upstream side of the bridge (the side where the water is flowing from), and then you all run over to the other side to see whose stick comes through first. The bears all argued about what type of stick would be best - should it be short? Or long? Should it be heavy? Should it be straight? No-one could agree so they ended up with quite a mixture.

On their first try, all their sticks got jumbled together as they went under the bridge and when they came out the other side, no-one could tell whose stick was whose, and they all claimed that theirs was the first one through. That didn't work very well. It would have been a good idea to have painted the ends of the sticks, or stuck on stickers, so that the bears could recognise them again. But they didn't have anything like that with them.

But then Scary remembered that they had some coloured lolly sticks with them which they had bought to use in some crafts they were doing later.

If they all had a differently coloured lolly stick, then they would recognise them instantly. They all agreed that they could spare some of them to play Pooh Sticks with. So they all started to choose colours, but discovered there were only 6 colours and there were 7 bears! So two of them had to have the same colour, red, but Tommy drew the letter 'T' on his so that they knew which was which. When they were all ready, they threw the sticks from the bridge at the same time.

The bears ran to the other side to see whose stick came out first, being very, very careful as they crossed the road. They all leaned over the bridge excitedly to see what colour was first through.

It was the yellow one which Teddy had chosen! Teddy won! Well done, Teddy!

Unfortunately, someone had to come last as well.

This time it was Boo, but everyone was very keen to come and play Pooh Sticks again, so Boo would get a chance to win another day. And they would all join in celebrating Teddy's win with lemonade and cake when they got home again.

Perhaps you could try a game of Pooh Sticks too. Make sure you take an adult with you, and possibly even some of your own sticks, in case you can't find anything suitable nearby. You might even want to take a small prize for the winner, or even play the game more than once so that everyone has the chance to win. Take care and have fun!