Game Time = Family Time

I've been pulling out some board games to play with Liam recently. It's been fun in more than one way!

He does like Hi Ho Cherrio if you play it according to his directions. You put the cherries on the tree with the stem "down" and then fill up the basket despite where the spinner lands. Then, all of a sudden, you dump all the cherries out wherever you feel like...maybe the floor, on the game itself or in the holes for the baskets and into the box. I guess that means we're done.

He received a nice new game, Chutes and Ladders, for Christmas from his cousin, Lilly Kate. I decided to put it with the other games, unopened, until a later date when he might be able to follow directions a little better. He had a different idea, however. It was very important that we open the game one night and try to play. After trying to distract him with a more age appropriate game, puzzle or book, I finally agreed and tried to prepare him for all the steps in playing the game. He was so anxious. We opened the box and found all the pieces needed to be punched out of the cardboard and "set up"...oh, what fun. He did such a good job popping the girl and boy pieces out and standing them up into the plastic stands. Then we assembled the spinner together and enjoyed some practice spins...what fun. We each chose a friend to use as our game piece, Liam gave the spinner a good spin, moved his friend the right amount of steps with Mommy's help and...the game was over. My first clue that the game was over? The friend jumped out of his plastic stand and the shark from the nearby animal toy basket preceded to eat the stand. It didn't take long for that hungry shark to eat all of the stands. It's a good thing
the friends got away safely!!!

Mama gave Liam some fun animal matching cards sometime last year. He's loved them from day one. They're great because they can be used as simple or as complex as you wish. For every animal there is a baby, too. Liam can match every mommy to each baby and call out the name of each (i.e: horse/foal). He mastered these skills some time ago. So, when we were enjoying them at the table one day, I thought we'd try a "Go Fish" style game. He watched intently as I shuffled the large cards, dealt two cards each and placed the others face down in a pile. I told him we had to try and find the mommy or baby to match the card in our hand. I preceded to ask him, "Liam, do you have a calf?". He said, "no". I said, "oh, draw a card Mommy" and I drew a card. Then I told him it was his turn. He showed me his cards and I prompted him to ask for one of his matches...he did. I didn't have the card so I said, "oh, draw a card Liam" and I helped him draw a card. He seemed to enjoy the game and we went back and forth a couple times with this same scenario. It held his attention until he realized that the cards could slide between the table leafs and stand up. This step in the game was soooo exciting! He quacked, mooed and clucked for some time. I'm anxious and curious to play this game again soon, though, to see how much he retained from our first go round.

Even though we didn't get to truly play the games, I figure it's really not too early to introduce them to him. One of the great gifts of playing games at any age is the quiet play you share together. The problem solving skills are just a plus!