Chapas - Spanish marbles

This week we joined in with Maggy from Red Ted Art and some other bloggers with a fun Google + hangout sharing bottle top crafts. We made the fun and frugal Spanish take on marbles- chapas!

This traditional game was played by children on the streets of Spain. As The Papa is Spanish we try to involve The Fairy and The Frog  in Spanish culture (e.g. songs, games and food) as well as speaking Spanish with them. This is really easy way to do it (and its good fun too, especially for The Fairy who loves collecting things!).

To play chapas you need to take a bottle top (if you aren't happy with your child using a metal one you can use a plastic one instead) and add a weight. We blu tacked in a penny.

Then draw around the bottle top and decorate the paper circle (handy tip - make sure it fits before you decorate the first time we made these we didn't and I ended up butchering the Fairy's master piece which was not approved!) We fixed ours on top of the penny with blu tac. Your decoration can literally be anything (as long as it doesn't prevent the chapa from moving when you hit it!). We made monsters, faces, transport and writing. You could also cut out a favourite character from a magazine.

Once you have made your chapa you need to make a track. Traditionally they are played on tracks chalked on the pavement. Because it was very rainy we opted for an indoor version. We drew and printed pictures of famous London landmarks to make a river Thames collage.

To play the game take it in turns to use your finger to hook the chapa around the track. The person who gets round the track first wins! Why don’t you pop over to You tube watch the video and see the other crafts demonstrated. Or hop over to Mama Smiles - they explained how to play marbles the French way.