Throw one, pick up one. Throw one, pick up two.

Jacks, Onesies, Knucklebones, Snobs, Gobs, Kugelach, Chamesh Avanim, Best Tas, Gonggi. There are so many different variations to this old school game familiar to many, Five Stones. It is a rather complicated game that children played in early Singapore. It involved throwing, picking up and catching little pyramid-shaped bags on the back of the hand. These little cloth bags are usually filled with saga seeds, beans, rice or sand. The game would progress from throwing and catching one bag, to five bags. It improves hand-eye coordination amongst children and captures their interest, as the game gets more and more thrilling.

You may ask why the ‘five stones’ are bags of different fillings and not made of actual stones. Some children have been known to play this game with real granite stones, of which they must meet a certain criteria. These stones must be smooth and of the correct size, though they will eventually smoothen out after much game-play over time. Where do they find these stones then? Well, the children of the olden days would pick granite stones from the dirt road, where they were scattered to create friction for wheels of bicycles or trishaws on the road.

Five Stones is an interesting game as there is a certain rhythm to it and you need good balancing skills to sustain the pyramid-shaped bags on the back of your hand. It is usually played by two people, who would take turns when the opponent fails to catch the required number of stones. Through different games like this, children can make new friends and at the same time test their reflexes. Young ones would also have Five Stones tournaments and would either bet their allowance or other possessions, such as spiders or marbles.

Modern-day technology has seen the rising popularity of handheld games, computer games or mechanical games. Spoilt for choice, few children play Five Stones these days, which is rather sad as the traditional game might one day be forgotten. Five Stones are now given as cute gifts for people to place in cabinets and go gaga over the cute patterns on the cloth and the feeling of the sand or beans inside it, instead of playing with it.

In other countries, the five stones are not just pyramid-shaped, but also rectangular or take form of other three dimensional shapes. Five Stones is an international game with many different names, and this can be used to bond different people across different countries as they reminisce on their childhood days.

Everyone will surely remember their childhood days, where most led a simple, kampong life and played simple games with everyday objects, like five little stones on the dusty road.

Throw one, pick up one, throw one, pick up two…

Article written by: [Sarah Tong Ren Xuan], [National Junior College]