Good Game Morning

With the rainy weather, the children didn't take to being booted outside first thing in the morning the way we'd been doing it earlier this week, so it was yet another indoor morning for us.


Prescription? Games, games, games.


I'm not at all into games--board games, card games, sports, about the only thing I will do is sit down for a good session of D&D if you've got a rockin' DungeonMaster--so the benefit when I do chill out with the girls and play a bunch of games with them is that, not only am I bored to tears inside my head, but I also get to feel like a REALLY good mother, you know, sacrificing my mental capacity and emotional well-being for my girls.


The girls are especially fond of Uncle Wiggily, a Goodwill score of a few months ago. Admittedly, it's a terrific game for their age range--you can use it to reinforce counting, number identification, basic arithmetic, as well as the usual turn-taking and sportsmanship and stuff:
When Sydney gets bored and wanders off to pretend that the toy dinosaurs are having conversations with each other, I liven the game up a little (and make it go a LOT faster) by playing Abacus Uncle Wiggily.

Do you guys have an abacus? They rock. Will can do all kind of crazy math using an abacus, and that's just the basic stuff that I know to teach her--if you really know, you can do all kinds of CRAZY stuff with an abacus.

Anyway, in Abacus Uncle Wiggily, you pull TWO cards (maybe even three, if you're brave) and add them together using the abacus: You get to hop forward your answer, of course. But if you're wrong...well, let's just say the consequences are dire.

After Uncle Wiggily, we played this ocean life card game that I bought the girls for Christmas. I don't know how you actually play, but sometimes we play a game using the front sides of the cards as flashcards--

And sometimes we use the trivia questions on the back. Okay, there is a game I do like: I LIKE trivia.

So a kid picks a card and brings it to me, and there are various permutations of which one or how many of the trivia questions on the back that I ask. If she answers the question(s) correctly, she adds the card to her collection. If she answers incorrectly, I add the card to my collection.

Because I was such a good mom, I gave myself permission to serve frozen pizza for lunch. With frozen spinach on top, though, so it's almost like a healthy lunch.

Sort of.