Family Games Night

One of my fondest childhood memories is of playing card and board games with my family in the evenings.  We used to go on lots of camping holidays, and that was how we spent our evenings - playing card games, Yahtzee and 'Sorry'. I know it wasn't just the games I enjoyed, but the time spent as a family, just my parents, my brother and myself.

Recently I read an article in our local free parenting magazine about having a family games night, and thought this might be a fun thing to do with our girls.  We do play games occasionally, and know how they are not only fun, but great for kids education, and mental development. We have a large selection of games in the cupboard, and really they don't get used often enough.

So perhaps to have one particular night a week set aside for family games, would be a way to actually use all of those games. I'm sure we'd all look forward to it, and create some of those memories for our kids, like I have of my own childhood family games nights.

How often do you play board or card games with your kids? Do you ever have family games nights?

Pass the Bomb

This is a wonderfully simple game that we've discovered is great fun to play with our kids.

It's a very simple idea. There is a set of cards with 2 or 3 letters on each. The aim of the game is to make words using those letters either at the beginning, middle or end - depending on the roll of a special die.

What makes the game more exciting is the 'bomb', which gets

passed around those playing. You have to hold the bomb when it's your turn until you think of a suitable word, then you can pass it on.  If you're left holding the bomb when it explodes you lose that round.

The game box says it's for players age 12 and up, but both our girls, aged 8 and 10 played it quite comfortably.  

It can be played as per the rules with 13 cards to work through - or sometimes we just play with random cards and no particular end to the game other than to have fun!

Any game that encourages kids to have fun with words is great, this also encourages thinking under pressure, and it's always funny to see what creative words both kids and adults try to get away with in order to 'pass the bomb'!

I'd definitely recommend this as a fun family game!

Mastermind - a game of logic

Have you ever played this game?

Mastermind is a two person code-breaking game that was invented in the 1970s as a board game.  

The code-maker chooses a combination of 4 coloured pegs, and the code-breaker tries to guess this combination.  For each guess, white and red pegs are used to signify if the colours guessed are correct or not and in the right place or not. 

White means the right colour but the wrong position, 

Red means the right colour in the right position.

This game is similar to a much older paper and pencil game called 'Bulls and Cows". This time the code-maker writes down 4 single digit numbers and the code-breaker tries to guess this. Instead of coloured pegs, the words bulls and cows are used to tell the code-breaker which numbers are correct and in the right or wrong place. 

We used to have this board game when I was a child, and I remember enjoying playing it often with my brother or parents.    When I found the game in a charity shop here - I bought it and our girls now love playing it too!

I'd never heard of the paper and pencil version of this game - but love the idea that we can play this when we're out and about - perhaps waiting for something - with nothing more than paper and pencil which I always have with me !

You can of course play this game online.  I have the game as an app on my phone, and my girls have played it on there too. This of course is a way you can play it on your own - against the computer, if you don't have a friend with you!

This is a great game for developing and practicing logic and reasoning skills. Super simple and lots of fun!

What simple games do you and your kids like to play?

Monopoly the game

Surely you know the board game Monopoly?  It was one of my favourite games to play as a child.  Games used to go on for hours or even days, with IOU notes being written to try and avoid bankruptcy, and extra rules added to prolong the game - like paying someone who was close to bankruptcy to move your piece around the board!

I even had a book on Monopoly tactics and strategies, which I was convinced helped me when I won (although my brother who I usually played against had also read the book!).

Monopoly the board game is over 75 years old.  According to the official website, the longest Monopoly game in history lasted for 70 straight days!  And there was a monopoly board once made worth $2 million dollars - with a 23 carat gold board and diamond studded dice!!

The original game had streets and locations in the UK - but now there are endless collectors editions like Star Wars and Cars versions and of course different versions depending on which country you are in - with streets from cities in your country to buy and develop!

Our girls are finally old enough to learn to play.  We don't have the Junior Monopoly, only the regular version. Both girls coped well with the game (at ages 6 and 8), although the younger one needed more help with all the maths involved!

For a start there's rolling two dice to move.  Simple addition and counting as you move your piece.  Then there's all the money - paying rents, giving change,  buying houses and so on.  There's multiplication when you land on a utility and the rent is 4 times what the dice roll was.   There is a lot of repetition and landing on the same places, so for example the rent of $18, becomes automatic to pay $20 and get $2 change without having to work it out!

As the game progresses, and houses and hotels are built - the monetary values increase too, so does the level of difficulty of the maths involved.  There is also the added difficulty of the 10% fee to un-mortgage a property!  

We played this morning for 3 hours straight!  Phew! Our elder daughter helped the younger one with some of the calculations, and there were several runs to the times tables poster in the hallway to work out rents payable! They LOVED it!  And I was amazed how fast the time flew - and that they never asked to stop!

I think Monopoly is a great game to introduce your kids to when they are old enough.  Our girls played again by themselves for the rest of the day!  Great practice for their number skills, but also skills of negotiation as they swap and buy properties from each other,  social skills as they work together and of course learning to cope with winning and losing  in an acceptable way!

Aside from the traditional board game - you can now play Monopoly online.

 There are even Monopoly World Championships for those of you who get really good!!

When was the last time you played Monopoly? What versions have you played?  Do your kids play it?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this wonderful game!