Holiday Ayo - Who doesn't know the marbles game? Indonesian usually called it gundu or kelereng. For those of you who don't know or have never played marbles, it could be that your childhood life was not happy.

In each region in this country marbles have different names. Betawi people call marbles by the name gundu. Javanese, neker. In Sunda, kaleci. Palembang, ekar, in Banjar, kleker and many more.

This term is also sometimes used by children in England in addition to marbles. In France, her name is Billie.

It turns out that from various historical searches , this game originally came from Ancient Egyptian civilization since 3000 BC (BC). In Egypt, marbles were made of clay or stone.


The oldest marbles in the collection of The British Museum in London date from 2000-1700 BC. The marbles were found on Crete at the Minoan site of Petsofa.

If gundu we usually play with today and are made of glass, were only developed in the middle of the 19th century.

In 1846, a German glazier named Elias Johann Christoph Simon Carl Greiner invented a tool called the marbelschere, which were actually molds to standardize the marble-making process.

Marble was popular in England and other European countries from the 16th to 19th centuries. After that, it only spread to America. The material for making it is clay and it is produced on a large scale.

At the time of Rowami, the game Marbles was also widely played. In fact, it is part of the Saturnalia festival, which is held just before Christmas. At that time everyone gave each other a bag of seeds that served as marbles as a sign of friendship.

Not a few values that we can get from this game. Call it relaxation or regulating emotions, sharpening the brain, exercising motor skills, patience, accuracy, training competitive characters, practicing honesty, to developing social skills.

Activities in this game, such as throwing and flicking marbles, can train fine and gross motor skills at school age. The better the motor skills, visual coordination, and concentration, the more proficient the child is to shoot the marbles.

Children's thinking abilities are also stimulated in this game. For example, if he wants to win the game he must solve problems and use strategies using certain techniques.

Playing this game is so easy, all children put a marble in the circle. Then all the children stand about a meter from the circle, behind a line. Alternately, toss another marble into the circle. The child whose marble is furthest from the circle may play first.