The other night I was talking to Forrest and I got to explaining what my still loose knit policy has been regarding teaching the kids, especially James so far, how to play games.
It hasn't been intentional but I have been avoiding focusing on any 1 game so far. Instead I have taught him the basics of a lot of games. And then let him decide if he wants to play one more.
So far we have played the Star Wars collectible cardboard miniatures game, The Star Wars miniature game, Warhammer 40K, Risk, War, Crazy 8's and finally Uno. The only one of those he reliably wants to play over and over is Uno, going so far as to get my Dad (who doesn't really play games at all that don't involve a ball) to play. Normally every week when my mom comes over for dinner we play a game or 2 of Uno. And Daniel actually tries to play Uno as well, doing pretty well on the basics actually.
While it hasn't been intentional I have decided I will continue this process of teaching the basics of games, and only occasionally repeating games. I think at this point the idea is to teach him all the many great things out there, and when he gets older if he wants to he can narrow his focus.
Of course in the course of playing these the main focus is sportsmanship. Teaching him how to lose and win with equal grace. This last part is no easy task, he is so competitive that he gets pretty upset when he loses anything. Which puts me on the razors edge of teaching without demolishing. Which is another reason I keep teaching him different games as that way he can learn general ideas of strategy that he can apply universally, and also so I can keep my own competitive nature from rising to the top.
We played Uno daily for a while. It's tapered off lately. One game that is fun is Cadoo. Zevan's not quite old enough to play on his own, but hey both enjoy it. They also play a modified version of Pokemon cards. We may try an RPG this summer as a family.
ReplyDeleteSportmanship is a difficult concept. We get a lot of hmphing and pouting and cries of foul play from the boy who doesn't win. Sigh.