Everything families need to set up, score and enjoy a proper game of skittles, from the very first roll to adapting the rules for toddlers and under-5s.
Skittles is one of the oldest and most joyfully simple bowling games in the world: stand a set of pins in a diamond, roll a ball, count what falls. A child as young as two can join in with a little help, and the game scales beautifully all the way to competitive family tournaments on a summer lawn. To play, arrange nine pins in a diamond pattern roughly three to four metres from a throwing line, take turns rolling a ball underarm, and score one point for every pin that topples. First player or team to reach an agreed total, or the highest score after an agreed number of rounds, wins.
That is the game in its entirety. What makes skittles so enduring, across centuries and across cultures, is that those simple bones can be dressed up or stripped back to suit almost any age, ability or back garden. The sections below walk through every step, from choosing your equipment to keeping a toddler cheerfully engaged when the ball veers wildly sideways.
Skittles is the direct ancestor of modern ten-pin bowling, and versions of it have been played across northern Europe since at least the thirteenth century. The word "skittle" is thought to derive from the Scandinavian skyttel, meaning a shuttle or projectile. By the nineteenth century, skittles was a fixture of British pub yards and village fetes, played with a wooden ball and nine pins arranged in a diamond. Jaques of London, established in 1795 and recognised as the world's oldest games company, has been supplying quality skittle sets throughout that tradition, sitting alongside the company's other contributions to play history, including the codification of croquet in 1851 and the creation of the Staunton chess set in 1849.
A standard home skittle set contains nine pins and one or two balls. The pins are traditionally turned from a single piece of wood, weighted at the base so they stand upright on their own. The ball is either wooden or rubber, small enough for a child's hand to grip comfortably. Beyond the set itself, you need a reasonably flat surface, a piece of tape or a garden cane to mark the bowling line, and something to write scores on. That is genuinely all.
Browse Jaques skittle sets, crafted for family play indoors and outThe classic nine-pin arrangement is a diamond: one pin at the front, two in the second row, three in the middle, two in the fourth row, one at the back. Place them on a flat patch of floor or lawn with roughly a hand's width between each pin. Mark your bowling line with tape, a rope or a chalk line. The recommended distance from line to front pin is three to four metres for adults, closer to one and a half to two metres for children under five. Before the first round, agree who resets the fallen pins between turns, because this small job is one that children aged three and upwards take enormous pride in.
Classic Nine-Pin Diamond Layout
Row 1 (nearest bowler): 1 pin · Row 2: 2 pins · Row 3: 3 pins · Row 4: 2 pins · Row 5: 1 pin. Spacing between pins approximately one hand's width. Adjust the bowling distance to suit your players.
The rules for a relaxed family game are deliberately light. Each player takes a turn bowling, rolling the ball underarm along the ground. A player may have one, two or three rolls per turn, depending on the version your family prefers. Count the number of pins knocked down across all rolls in that turn, then reset all pins before the next player bowls. Play continues for an agreed number of rounds, usually five or ten. The player with the highest cumulative score wins.
Standard scoring is straightforward: one point per pin knocked down. After five rounds of nine pins, a perfect score is 45. For children who are learning to count, skittles is a genuinely useful tool. Each fallen pin is a unit to count aloud, and the running total on the scorecard gives purpose to the arithmetic. For children not yet ready to track a running total, try "collection scoring": give each child a small bowl and place a pebble or counter in it for every pin they knock down. The child with the fullest bowl at the end wins. This keeps all the physical pleasure of the game intact while removing the cognitive load of addition.
Research Note: Play and Early Numeracy
Researchers Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff have documented extensively that children acquire early mathematical concepts most durably through playful, embodied activity rather than formal instruction. Counting fallen skittle pins, with the physical cause-and-effect of the rolling ball, is precisely the kind of concrete, self-motivated counting that builds lasting number sense.
The beauty of skittles is its elasticity. For a two-year-old, set up just three or four pins and place the bowling line close enough that a successful knock is almost guaranteed. Success matters enormously at this age: Jaak Panksepp's research on the PLAY system identifies the emotional reward of physical agency as a core driver of healthy development, and a toddler who topples pins feels that reward vividly. For three- and four-year-olds, gradually introduce more pins, a slightly greater distance and the idea of taking turns. By age four or five, most children can follow the basic rules and enjoy light competition.
The evidence gathered by developmental researchers over several decades points consistently in the same direction: young children learn best when they move, interact and play with physical objects in the company of others. Adele Diamond's work on executive function demonstrates that games involving turn-taking, rule-following and goal-directed action build the very cognitive capacities, including attention, impulse control and working memory, that underpin later academic and social success. Skittles asks a child to wait, to watch, to plan the angle of a roll, to respond to an outcome and to begin again. Each of those micro-moments is developmental work, dressed up as a game.
The WHO on Physical Activity in Early Childhood
The World Health Organization recommends that children under five engage in a variety of physical activities throughout the day. Active play such as skittles, which combines gross motor movement, social interaction and rule-based thinking, directly supports these guidelines while remaining entirely child-led and intrinsically motivating.
Vygotsky observed that play creates a zone of proximal development, a space in which a child operates just beyond their current independent ability, scaffolded by the game's structure and by the presence of more capable players. A four-year-old bowling alongside an older sibling or a parent is learning to count, to strategise and to regulate the frustration of a miss, all at once, all willingly.
Children can enjoy a simplified version of skittles from around eighteen months to two years, when they have the gross motor control to roll a ball along the floor. At this age, the game is really about cause and effect: the delight of watching pins fall. Structured turn-taking and basic scoring become meaningful from around three, and by four or five most children can follow a full family game with minimal adaptation. There is no upper age limit, which is rather the point.
For a child-friendly game, a clear run of roughly two to three metres is sufficient indoors, from bowling line to pins, with a little room behind the pins for the ball to come to rest. In a garden or on a lawn, four to five metres gives adults a proper challenge. A hallway, a kitchen cleared of chairs or a living room with the coffee table pushed aside all work well on a rainy afternoon. The pins need a flat, reasonably smooth surface to stand on, short grass or a wooden floor being ideal.
Wooden sets offer several practical advantages for young children. The weight and solidity of a turned wooden pin means it stands reliably upright and falls with a satisfying clatter that light plastic pins rarely match. Researcher Carly Dauch and colleagues found that simpler, less visually cluttered toys support deeper, more sustained play in young children, and a plain wooden skittle set fits that principle well. Wooden sets also tend to be more durable across years of enthusiastic play, which makes them a considered long-term choice for a family.
Frustration is a normal and healthy part of play, but there are several ways to keep the emotional temperature comfortable for young children. Move the bowling line closer so misses are rare. Give younger children an extra roll as a house rule, framed as a bonus rather than a consolation. Celebrate near-misses with genuine enthusiasm: "that one almost went!" shifts the emotional frame from failure to almost-success. Both Pellis and Panksepp note that the social context of play matters as much as the activity itself. A warm, laughing adult beside a child who has missed is providing exactly the co-regulation that makes a challenging moment manageable rather than defeating.
Britain's oldest toy maker. Every toy open-ended, wooden, and built for exactly the kind of play the research recommends.