Once again it is time for a new year and new beginnings! Hopefully you and yours are staying warm and safe so far this winter. It has been a bit on the cold side here and we are looking forward to getting out of the deep freeze – hopefully sooner rather than later!
In the meantime, it’s once again time to get back on track. I don’t know about you, but it has been a couple of months before I had a chance to sit at my sewing machine. That’s kind of sad isn’t it? I really haven’t even been in my sewing room for a while. I have contended myself with some yarn things and am taking advantage of a New Year of Beginnings to get my sewing room cleaned up once again. What is it they say? Fail, get up tomorrow and fail better? Something like that. Sums up things pretty nicely.
And I fell down a few rabbit holes…I’ll spare you the details of all of them and just share with you the main one.
It involves the whole family and believe it or not, board games.
As I may have mentioned, we have a couple of kids, boys in fact. One of them is on the smart side. Not like genius level or anything, but things come very easy for him. So, we have been working with his teacher to keep him challenged and one of the ways we have been keeping him challenged at home is by playing board games. I’m not talking about the usual Sorry! or Monopoly. While we do have those, we turned toward strategy games like Carcassone, Splendor, and Catan.
Neither my husband or I had ever played any of these games and while a friend introduced us to Splendor. I also have Wanda to talk to about games as she and her husband both play a variety of similar games. Thanks Wanda! I look forward to many more conversations with you (and not only about board games. lol!!)
We found a great resource on YouTube for learning gameplay, in particular we have been avidly watching Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop where we learned about even more games such as Lanterns, Tsuro of the Seas, and Qwirkle. Tabletop isn’t the only table game channel out there, but we did learn about a lot more games and our selection of games grew with Sagrada and Labyrinth:Oceans. Most of these games the whole family can play (and the youngest is turning 5) with the boys asking to play more games every night after dinner.
We played a lot during our Christmas break and in case you are curious about the games, I included a link on each of the titles above to Amazon. If you were interested in some new games for your family, we have had great fun with all of the ones above. Let’s face it, sometimes the directions for games are not written in the most clear manner and that can make learning a new game challenging. Enter YouTube! Of course, be sure to check out your local game shop. You might find some experts and recommendations there. We do visit ours with a bit of frequency and sometimes find some new treasures.
What makes these games different from the usual board games? Most of those games are based on the roll of dice which leaves a lot of things to chance. Some of the games above incorporate dice into their play, but they rely more on strategy than chance. I’m not an expert by any means, but the play experience is very different and seems more interactive. Many of the games involve paying attention to what your opponent is doing because the play you make may help your opponent or perhaps hinder them. There are even some games that encourage more of a cooperative play where you are all working toward the same goal.
These games have created a more family fun atmosphere at home and gives us fun things to do while we spend more time together. Unfortunately our list of games to acquire and play keeps getting longer…. Kind of like my UFO list…..hmm…..
Monkey's on the Porch 