Game Boy!

The writer of a blog titled "I Can Teach My Child," on April 4, 2012, explored several good reasons for playing board games with preschoolers. At the top of that list is the direct human interaction that electronic gaming negates as well as the undivided attention the two of you commit to a shared project. In addition, board games teach kids "how to take turns and be graceful losers." Finally, they offer a fun context for teaching strategy and age-appropriate cognitive skills.

I noticed these things myself a couple weeks ago, when Beenie pulled my Hi Ho Cherry-O game off the shelf and asked to play it rather than Temple Run or some of the other iPad games he likes. That was the first of several days filled with counting and fruit-picking and groaning when the spinner landed on the bird, the dog, or, worst of all, the upset fruit basket. In fact, he loved the game so much that he asked me to give him his own Hi Ho Cherry-O for his birthday.

When I showed him some You Tube videos of kids playing other vintage children's games, he was enthralled with another Hasbro product--Hungry, Hungry Hippos--and asked for that one as well. So last Monday, on Beenie's birthday, we spent a delightful afternoon whooping and hollering and watching Bottomless Potamus, Veggie Potamus, and their hippo friends make a quick lunch out of a batch of marbles.

As Beenie's birthday celebration reached into this past weekend to include a small party of friends and cousins, the focus on games continued. Another addition to his toy shelf, contributed by his aunt and uncle, was "Cavity Sam" and the popular game Operation. Here, in extracting the likes of Sam's Adam's Apple, Funny Bone, and Charley Horse, was the chance for not only whole new rounds of laughter but a honing of the hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills begun with Hi Ho Cherry-O.

I look forward to more game-playing with this cute, smart kid as spring unfolds and his preschool season gives way to kindergarten. Like most kids, he prefers to win, but I will try to discourage those sneaky little attempts to fudge ("Did that spinner really land on the line, Beenie?") and offer sympathy when he lands on that upset fruit basket. When he beats me fair and square (which is actually quite often), I always try to say, "I know I didn't win this time, but I still had fun playing."

Happy fifth birthday to you, my little game boy. I hope our games together help prepare you for school and for life. You can't win every time, but that doesn't mean you can't have a whole heck of a lot of fun in the process.

Bad Guys and Vampires

It doesn't seem unusual for little boys to be fascinated by superheroes. I would expect to be buying toys and T-shirts featuring Batman, Superman, and the rest of that familiar lineup. With four grandsons, I have certainly bought my share of those.

Then, a couple years ago, Pooh developed an affinity for bad guys, particularly Horace and Jasper, the dog thieves in 101 Dalmatians. On every visit for several months, I would have to role-play one of them while he played the other. This wore me out. It seems that, in the process of dog-napping, thieves must expend a considerable amount of physical energy.

More recently, Beenie, who will be four in just a few weeks, always wants me to show him, on my iPhone, images of every bad guy he or I can think of. To this end, we have engaged in numerous discussions of Joker, Mr. Freeze, Penguin, Riddler, and  Jesse James. Once, I even threw Clyde Barrow into the mix. It seems I need to increase my repertoire of bad guys I can think of off the top of my head.

Last night, however, Beenie decided to pretend he was a vampire (I have no idea where he learned about vampires--I swear I am innocent this time.). As the potential victim of this particular bad guy, I had reasonable cause to worry. I had to pull my collar up around my neck and think fast.

"What does a vampire look like?" Beenie wanted to know.

"Well, he has sharp fangs, I said." And that's when, by the miracle of free association, I thought of apples. Sure enough, there was a single apple in the fridge that we were able to stretch into a play session of half hour or more.

"How?" you ask. Like so:

Yes, a secret yet untapped by apple promoters worldwide is that apple slices make perfect fangs. A typical apple, we learned, will afford you about ten sets of fangs. Each set will last several minutes from the victim's initial shriek of terror to the vampire's inevitable ingestion of his own teeth.

Luckily, no necks have to be harmed in the process of this particular vampire game. Last night, our biggest problem was the fact that we had only one apple and, thus, had to ration our fangs very carefully.

As it turns out, a little boy's preoccupation with bad guys isn't doomed to an undesirable outcome. As an added bonus to lots of fun and laughs, the kid, in the natural course of play, ends up with a healthy snack, and you can't beat that.

Star Wars Yahtzee Jr. Gets Five Stars

I've been thinking about Pooh all day long, and I hope the force is with him. By that, I mean I hope he and his sisters are having fun playing the new game Pa-pa and I delivered to him over the weekend as we observed his seventh birthday just a few days early.

All in all, I was pretty pleased with our launch of Star Wars Yahtzee Jr. I have always enjoyed the dice-rolling excitement of a good Yahtzee match, and I have to say this particular version adapts quite well to the needs of kids age four and older.

Instead of the usual numbered dots, the six sides of most dice feature pictures of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, R2D2, Chewbacca, and Yoda, who acts as a wild card as players try to collect as many pictures as possible of a single character in a three-roll turn.

Since there is evil in every universe, one side of one sinister die is reserved for the picture of Darth Vader. If Darth turns up on a player's roll, that player loses the advantage of that fifth die for the remainder of that particular turn.

Further, the game is designed so that kids don't have to keep individual scores on note pads as they make decisions about how to count the dice rolls. Instead, they use color-coded game markers to mark their choices on a game board visible to all players at all times. This enables discussions of options with kids who may need help figuring out rolling and scoring choices. The board, game pieces, and dice (and a set of four happy players) look like this:

The game can be easily adapted for two, three, or four players, with the difference being the number of turns all players get. Once begun, things move quickly, and the kids seem excited both to take their own turns and to watch what happens as their opponents roll the dice, consider options, and strategize.

In our experience, the downsides of the game are few. You have to caution the kids not to bump the scoreboard and displace markers that have already been played, because then the cumulative scores are lost for that game. Another issue is the number of relatively small pieces (twenty score markers, five dice) to keep track of when a number of boisterous kids are involved.

But I have to say the five of us (Zoomie and I were partners) had a great time with Star Wars Yahtzee Jr. The instructions are clear and easy to follow. In the event of a number of kids who are fairly young, though, I would recommend flying a reconnaissance mission into the box ahead of time to punch out score markers and place the stickers on the dice. I did this, and am pretty sure I saved us some time, potential chaos, and possible damage to the game components.

Happy Birthday to you, Pooh. You are the most special first-grader in my universe. May the candles on your cake tonight glow like light sabers, and may your life be filled with a lot of Yodas and very few Darths.

Teenage Girl Chickens

Last Saturday Pooh and I were sitting in his mama's van waiting for her to fetch us a couple hot drinks from their small-town coffee shop. On a day that, technically, was still supposed to be summer, the morning temp had registered 39.

Pooh had just finished a soccer game that pretty well froze his fingers and ears, and I had tried to keep warm by pacing up and down the sideline while he dribbled and kicked. (Let the record show that he scored the first goal of the game, which his team went on to "win" 5-4.)

With Mama stymied by a long line of frozen soccer fans and slow service, it occurred to Pooh and me that we would be warmer if the side door of the van were closed. (Yes, we are that astute.)  But when I got out to shut it. I was reminded that their van doesn't have a push-button door like mine does. I was standing there puzzling over how to close the door when Pooh suddenly yelled, "Pull it!"

I am always amazed by the triggering process whereby some random sensory stimulus pulls a seemingly unrelated thought up into the consciousness. In this case, I immediately associated "Pull it!" with the word pullet, meaning a young chicken.

From there my mind tripped down a neural pathway where I found a long-hidden game my dad used to play with us. Of course, I had to share it with Pooh, so I clambered back to where I could reach him strapped into a back seat and began.

I touched his forehead with a forefinger and said, "Rooster," his nose and said, "Pullet," and his chin and said, "Hen." Then, as Dad did with me many, many times, I went back to his nose and asked, "Now, what did I say this was?"

"Pullet," he said, and I said, "Okay," before giving his nose a little tug. Pooh cackled at the joke in his best chicken fashion--but he didn't know what a pullet is.  To get my facts exactly right, I consulted Mr. Google before explaining.

"A pullet is a girl chicken that is not quite one year old," I paraphrased. "She hasn't lost her feathers yet, but she has already started laying eggs." We both pondered this. "It's kind of like a teenage girl chicken," I added.

Pooh marveled that a chicken could be a teenager in just a year. I marveled at the timing of this spontaneous little episode on the day that marked the third anniversary of Dad's passing. It was almost as though he had come back for a moment to laugh and play with us.

I finally got the door shut. The drinks arrived, coffee for me and hot chocolate for him. The magic of the moment was gone, but the memory of it is still as warm and delicious as the first sip of coffee on a cold morning.  

The Morning Games

Since Sooby was born six years ago today, I have discovered and re-discovered a lot of ways to have fun.  But I have to say that, right there at the top of that list, standing head and shoulders above everything else, are the morning games.

Unlike most forms of entertainment, the morning games require no money.  They don't require tickets.  You don't have to get dressed up; in fact, you don't even have to get out of your nightgown.  You don't need to comb tangles out of your hair or brush on mascara to make your eyes look like they are open.

Our best morning games have taken place at Sooby's house. They often transpire not long after daybreak during an overnight visit.  On game days I will awaken while the house is still quiet, lie there, and wait.  I am never disappointed.  It is never long until my fellow player pads up alongside my bed, pulls back the blankets, and snuggles in beside me.

Sometimes she pulls up her nightshirt so I can scratch her back.  She may drowse a little longer before starting the first game, or she may launch right into it.  I caution her to be "a little bit quiet" so as not to wake up everyone else.  The morning games will still be fun when the other players arrive, but right now they are best when it is just Sooby and Googie.

Yesterday was my last opportunity to play the morning games with Sooby as a five-year-old.  It was six years ago today that she came screaming into our world, and she still has the volume.  She still charms me and amazes me and keeps me pretty well wrapped around her pinkie.  She still holds my heart in her pudgy little hand.

The morning games usually grow out of some conversation that eventually arises when both of us realize that neither or us is going to sleep anymore right then.  Yesterday, in a conversation about the highlights of her past year, I asked her, "What's the best idea you've had while you were five?"

She thinks hard a couple seconds and then says, "It was an idea I had that I was a real princess."  She went on to tell me about the castle and its four inhabitants--Queen Julie ("because she wore a lot of jewelry"); King John; Prince Johnson ("because, of course, he was 'John's son'"); and herself, the princess.

She talks of a lavish ball (Cinderella influence, I'm guessing), at which she dances with all the young fellows in the kingdom while Prince Johnson dances with all the young ladies ("womens" and "mens").  The music playing in the royal ballroom is from The Nutcracker.

We are about to cast ourselves as the princess and Queen Julie in one of our dramatic improvisations, when Bootsie arrives on the scene demanding to be cast as "the baby."  Since there is no baby in the castle, Sooby and Boots suddenly become a mother and her baby who are in the hospital. 

Our dramatic enterprises demand spontaneity and versatility.  Just when I am about to be promoted to queen, I become a lowly nurse who, it seems, has to administer a lot of medicine and shots. 

And so it goes for a bit, until Pooh jumps through the door brandishing a scowl and plastic baseball bat, with which he (a "bad guy," of course) engages in some serious bashing and smashing.  By now, the morning game has pretty well morphed into chaos, and, in order to save innocent lives (mostly my own), it is time to promote breakfast.

When I left the kids' house yesterday afternoon, Sooby's mama was making a strawberry birthday cake, and Sooby was painting a papier-mached balloon red for a strawberry piñata.     

Happy Birthday today, my strawberry girl.  It was six years ago today that you made me Googie.  I cannot even remember an identity before that.  That was many, many morning games ago.