A variety of games

Well, we aren’t away, we’re at holiday care and work, though as I work half day, we are home in the afternoons.  My son is 6 and in grade R, and we play children’s Monopoly (a firm favourite with him and friends on play dates), Zingo (which is like Bingo but with pictures and words), and snakes and ladders.  We also play dominoes instead of reading a story some nights at bed time, just for a change.  We also love playing snap with cards, and we have a set of old maid cards too, which he loves, as well as a game called “war” that requires a bit of number knowledge of most and least. 

I want to introduce chess and draughts soon and try our hand at scrabble.  As he’s 6 so early in the year (beginning of February) I find that by half way through the school year he needs a lot of learning interaction as he has grasped everything at school and the children born from October onwards are still struggling and he refuses to do things as he’s mastered the skills already, so I ask him just to do the stuff to make the teacher happy otherwise she thinks he can’t do them and then we read more advanced books and play loads of board games at home – so that is why we’ll be giving scrabble a try soon, he’s already going around the house spelling out everything in sight (h-a-t, v-a-n, d-o-g, m-o-m, d-a-d), and I’ve begun labeling “fridge”, “plant”, “bed”, “chair”, “door”, “books”, “wall” and so on, so I think he’s just ripe for some scrabble.   

I grew up in a home filled with board games and I’m a trivial pursuit queen who nobody will play with anymore, but I can’t wait to introduce my son to Twister and Cluedo and Pictionary and Othello and Chess (which I still need to learn to play) and risk and scrabble and trivial pursuit, and master mind and grown up monopoly and balderdash and, and, and …

Following the rules is a definite (except the pointless ones I agree), otherwise the game just isn’t fun for anyone.  Board games are lovely family time spent together, they also teach good sportsmanship, and about how things work better if we have rules.  We all come across someone in life who puts their scrabble pieces off the side of the board and thinks its hugely funny and snorts about how uptight everyone else is when they don’t laugh uproariously about the made up word going off the side of the board.  Come on, we all get stuck with x, z, t, q, s and b sometimes, but you do what you can. 

Now, what shall we play this afternoon?  Oh, that’s right, we’re building a glow in the dark skeleton and playing the body IQ board game that came with the book and skeleton. 

Kind regards
Kim