This book is dedicated to all the children of the world May they have a bright future and enjoy peaceful
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I want to thank the many educators who shared their expertise to make this book possible In particular Judith Hankes contributed her material about the dream catcher Esther Ilutsik shared her knowledge of Yup ik border patterns Marcia Ascher set me straight on the solution to the river crossing puzzle involving the jealous husbands and Beverly Ferrucci shared Japanese paper cutting and several games I am grateful to the authors of the many books listed in the Bibliography that were a source of information and inspiration for this collection Cynthia Sherry was a most concerned and involved editor she played all the games and carried out the activities pointing out my mistakes and occasional lack of clarity I take full responsibility for any remaining
Introduction id you know that some of the games that kids play were invented hundreds even thousands of years ago Today you can play computer ver sions of Tic tac toe and Oware games that go back at least 3 300 years to ancient Egypt The games puzzles and projects in this book come from all parts of the world Africa Asia Europe North America and the island nations of Hawaii the Philippines and New Zealand called Aotearoa by the Maori people who first lived there These activi ties will introduce you to the people who played the games who solved the puzzles and who designed the art You will exercise your brain as you solve puzzles like the African children's network that a European scientist said was impossible You will follow the lead of Islamic artists who made beautiful patterns using only a compass and a straightedge unmarked ruler You will design and decorate game boards and make the game pieces you will need to play some of the games You will make models of the homes that different people around the world live in In all of these activities you will be using math Many of these math ideas are probably different from
