Valentine’s Day – Looking Back ♥

After we moved to Anacortes I got a really nice dart board from Amber and put it up in shop. Sometimes when I’m stuck on a programming problem I’ll throw a few darts and see if it comes to me. So far I’m not getting much better at darts or programming.

The problem is that Wesley and Jillian wanted to throw darts as well. I was fine with that. But it became obvious rather quickly that their aim was not good (genetic I suppose). They were filling the door, wall and floor with little holes. The board itself was mostly safe.

So we bought one of those plastic tip dart boards and hung it below my board. But frankly they suck. You throw the darts, they bounce off. Or if they do stick, they frequently fall out on their own. It was frustrating for the kids and for me. Next we tried a regular dart board, but hung it lower thinking their problem was one of height. It was not.

Finally we got a Doinkit Darts dartboard. We hung this below my standard board as well. These use strong “rare-earth” magnets and they really work. Of hundreds of throws I don’t think any have bounced off. They are safer than the plastic tip darts (as long as you don’t swallow them) and work so much better. Plus because they don’t bounce off we have a special oche at a Jillian distance without fear of her getting poked.

We got ours on Amazon, but you can also get a set at your local toy store. Ours is Read Me A Story. It costs about as much as a good set of standard darts, but is really worth it if your kids want to play darts and you care about your walls at all.

Highly recommended with one caveat. Because the tip is so much wider than a normal dart you’ll need to decide what scores. Do you score whichever field the majority of the tip is in? Or do you let the thrower pick whichever of the touching fields they want? We go with the last one because it lets the kids do better and makes the game less frustrating for them.