Our Favorite Games Report: August 2013

Wanting some logic training for the girls but not finding anything packaged that I like, I've begun to consciously incorporate all kinds of puzzles and games into our days. Of course, we've always played puzzles and games, but bringing them also into our "work hours," not just our free time, has let us start playing together MUCH more often, as well as allowed the girls to feel free to explore more than just their very favorites.

Here's what we've been playing this month:

online Quiddler and Set

There's a new puzzle every day, and although Will and I don't play every single day, we do play most days.

Apples to Apples Junior

(Now that we've got the junior version, I can put the sexy cards back in the adult version that we've been using!)

The Settlers of Catan

We haven't gotten the hang of this game yet, but we're sticking with it.

 Now What?

(SUCH a great game for creativity and logic!)

Sorry

Although the rest of the family is so over this one, Sorry is ALWAYS Syd's choice!

 Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego?

This one is a recent love. We tried playing it back when I first bought it around Christmastime, but it was too hard to hold the girls' attention. Since it had all its pieces, however, and since there's no price like a Goodwill price, I held onto it. 

At some point this month, on a nice afternoon when our plan was to take a couple of board games and Pandora radio on the ipad out to the picnic table by the chickens, Will chose this game again, probably because she'd forgotten how frustrated she'd been with it just a few months ago. She and I played it while Sydney watched and drew and fed stuff to the chickens, and this time, she loved it!

Key to the experience is that this time she was actually able to answer a couple of the questions--

"What city holds the Liberty Bell?"

"In what city did both the Second Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention convene?"

--and, since we had the ipad right there, whenever she was curious about a piece of trivia, we just looked it up! We looked up the details of and circumstances surrounding the United States' purchase of Alaska ("How can you just BUY a state?!?" she asked), and the Louisiana Purchase, and we watched several scenes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind so that both girls could see Devil's Tower--I think we'll also be able to see that one in person this summer on our dino dig road trip.

Some games are becoming a little tricky right now, because Will is growing interested in more complicated, multi-player games, like Settlers of Cataan and Axis and Allies, that just don't hold Syd's attention, but having the three of us play an hours-long game while leaving Syd out is also pretty impossible. We have tentative future plans with another family who has kids around the same ages as ours to have a dinner and game night, so that the older kids and at least a couple of the adults can try out a free kiddie D&D game that I found. If that works out well, perhaps it can become some sort of monthly family board game club!

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Book Page Prints and a Lemonade Stand

a tutorial for crafting greeting cards using vintage book pages and bilateral symmetry

and a tutorial for making re-usable chalkboard signs

most particularly to use with the girls' now pimped-out lemonade stand

I'm not actually sure what they'll be selling--beaded necklaces, popcorn, and tries on their pegboard and metal screw Plinko game have all been considered--but they'll be open for business this weekend!

Quill Pens from Chicken Feathers

We have goose feathers and ink bottles in our homeschool/art supplies, and the girls play with them every so often. When Will asked to do quill pens this weekend, though, it was with one key difference. Syd wrote with a quill pen made from a goose feather--

--and Will wrote with a quill pen made from Fluffball, her chicken:

When Will asked to make a quill pen from one of Fluffball's glorious feathers that she'd found, I knew it would work, but I didn't realize how difficult it would be to create. I had anticipated teaching Will how to make the quill pen herself with her pocket knife, but the chicken feather had a far narrower, and thus stronger, interior channel, and thicker walls, it seemed, and I had to use a lot of force just to make the pen myself.

The final product, however, although more clumsily made than usual, worked just fine! Syd wrote a letter to a friend using her goose feather pen, and Will wrote out all her vital information--full name, birthday, age, grade, etc.--with her chicken feather pen.

Remember how I've told you on numerous occasions that my children have an absurdly poor memory for their vital information? Just this weekend, on their way to audition for the roles of the No-Neck Monsters in an IU student production of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," (clearly a tale for another day!), we were going over audition etiquette and I said to them, "And what would you say if the director asks what grade you're in?", and they were both all, "I don't know." Well, they come by that poor memory honestly, because as they were working, Will asked me a question, and, only paying half attention as I replied while doing my own work, I said something about "since you're eight years old, blah blah blah." Several minutes later, a new thought occurred to me and I suddenly shouted, "Gah! You're NINE!!!" and hugged that protesting baby to my bosom in both joy and grief.

And that's what school is likely to look like at our house!

History of the Video Game Unit Study: LEGO Marble Mazes

The girls and I are at the very beginning stages of our History of the Video Game unit study.

We're so early into it that we haven't even started studying video games yet!

The pre-history of video games involves portable tabletop games--primarily bagatelle, a sort of mini pool table with obstacles. That game was turned into a game of chance called baffle ball by tilting it and adding a plunger, and letting the balls fall into various pockets. Games of chance, however, are also easily made into games of gambling, and to sidestep the backlash against gambling, baffle ball added flippers, turning it into a game of skill called pinball.

Also involved in the prehistory are jukeboxes and the invention of the computer, but for now, we're beginning at the beginning: tabletop games of skill and/or chance.

So we built one!

Using a LEGO base plate as the base of the maze, first build up a wall of LEGOs around the perimeter of the plate, and then create a maze for a marble to navigate:

It's the simplest of projects, and the girls were enthralled:

Both of them re-built their maze over and over, re-running the marble through it to explore different layouts and strategies, and Sydney has come back to it daily over the past week or so. She's discovered that a maze might be simple going one direction and difficult going the reverse direction, she's discovered that you can amp up the challenge by adding two marbles, and she's gotten out our drilled wooden marble maze blocks to explore different ways that gravity can move marbles through a path.

I must make a note to take her to the Wonderlab this week--they have an inclined LEGO base plate and a big bucket of LEGOs set up in their water exploration area so that you can run water down the base plate and dam it up or make channels for it with LEGOs. I admit that I'VE spent plenty of time playing with that brilliant toy!

DIY Clay Rings from The Sparkle Factory

Futzing around with clay is a big pastime around here. The girls like it enough that I've occasionally considered signing them up for a pottery class, but ugh--scheduling! I HATE scheduling extracurriculars! I can't believe that I used to actually gripe that my kids never wanted to try anything new; now they want to try ALL. THE. THINGS, and I gripe about having to either deny them opportunities or overschedule our precious free time.

Anyway...

We were talking about futzing with clay. A publicist sent me a free copy of The Sparkle Factory, and the girls and I have spent a surprising amount of time in the last week playing with the surprisingly addictive process of making clay rings, using the tutorial from the book.

It looks a little like this:

And then you have this!

My ring is pretty sedate--

--but the girls' rings are AMAZING! 

Sydney's ring has a top embellished with clay discs.

Willow's ring has an embedded crinoid fossil!

The project has inspired us, as we've since crafted bracelets, pendants, beads, and other little trinkets, all from our Sculpey stash. I have plans to see if our cat paw prints that we usually do in salt dough would work equally well in this medium, too.

Would the chickens tolerate having their footprints made in clay, I wonder?

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Winners and Chair Covers

the winner of the Soaps to Live by giveaway

and a tutorial for DIY chair covers

otherwise known as the cat's new favorite place to sleep

Ideally, I'll make two sets of these--one to wash and one to wear. This project, of course, joins the to-do list of imaginary things that will never be completed, such as just one more set of cloth napkins, a guest set of cloth napkins, a guest set of felted wool Mason jar cozies, the second set of mattress pads...

Backyard Archery

Will's Lil' Banshee bow only has an 18lb draw, but it's just about too much for her.

Thank goodness for a patient Daddy!

He helps her draw her bow Every. Single. Time, and has an attention span for it that's at least 20 minutes longer than mine.

Because we need more weird things to do in our yard? I guess the hay bale target can live next to the chicken tractor and the DIY aerial silks rig.