(Pint Size) Games We Play

We love playing games as a family (obviously) but with a 2 and 3 year old sometimes it's pretty difficult to find things that we can all enjoy playing.  So here are our latest favorites...Hisss and Uno Moo.

 

 

Hisss - (Here's the Amazon link - though if you think it's a game you want to add to your collection, check out your local gaming or comic book store first!)

 

My cousin got this game for A for her 2nd birthday, turns out it's just a smidge advanced for her and all she wants to do is throw the cards around, but C absolutely loves it!  It reminds me of a cross between Tsuro (path building) and Uno (color matching), the goal of the game is simply to build as many snakes as you can until the draw pile (or player's attention span) runs out.  The cards are perfect size for little hands and the colors are nice and vibrant. This is an excellent game for working on color matching and fine motor skills. 

 

 

Uno Moo! - (Here's the Amazon Link)

 

This game happens to be A's favorite game at the moment.  We picked it up to help her learn her colors and it's great for that.  It's basically like regular Uno except that rather than cards you have little balls and rather than numbers you have animals.  You play by matching either the color or animal and you get to knock the ball into the barn before setting your ball up on the door.  This is a great game for working on color recognition and matching in addition to working on those fine motor skills.

 

Growing Games

Todays post isn't a geeky game but a growing game...

On pintrest a while back I pinned this link to a fine motor skill activity. 

 

I picked up some salt and pepper shakers at the dollar store, the die and toothpicks we already had at home.  We started out just putting the toothpicks in the shakers then shaking them out...

 

but then we came up with an idea to take it to the next level and make it into a game. I ran into grab a die... C would roll the die, then count the dots and put that number of toothpicks in the shaker.  Simple and yet it kept her busy and smiling for about half an hour plus we got to work on fine motor and counting skills.

 

 

Gloom

Back on Table Top Day we picked up Gloom figuring, it would be fun to get into some card games and it turns out that that was a great investment because this pretty much has to be one of the best games I have played in a while.  My husband and I played it by ourselves the first time so we could figure it out before introducing it to our friends, but after that first night we were hooked.  The best part about the game is really the story telling I think and while it was fun with just the two of us, it really is amazing when there are other players to bring more families into the mix.  

 

The object of the game is to make your family as miserable as possible before their "untimely death" while making the members of the other players families as happy as possible and the family with the least amount of points at the end of the game wins.  As I said up above the best part of the game is the story telling aspect, yeah you could just put the cards down on top of the other cards, but it is way more interesting when you can explain just how exactly Cousin Mordecai was walking through a forest when he got "mauled by manatees" or how Lord Slogar who is actually just a brain in a box met his untimely death by "choking on a chicken bone" you can seriously learn a lot about your opponents by playing this game :)

 

If you want to see Gloom in play here is its Table Top episode!

Tabletop Day 2013

Like many others I was ecstatic when International Tabletop Day was announced on Geek and Sundry  then I realized that it was to be held on the day before Easter and some of the excitement faded a bit when I realized we had a ton to do that day, still we did the best we could!

 

To celebrate the day we made our first trip to our local comic book store!  This is a place where if Tabletop Day didn't exist we probably wouldn't have found.   The shop is called Zombie Planet and I am so glad we did find it!  Having never been in a comic book store before I had no idea what to expect, when I walked in the door I was pretty amazed.  In addition to the comics (which are housed upstairs), this place has every game imaginable and they have weekly and monthly events.  We bought three new games (Smiles, Qwirkle Cubes and Gloom) and walked away with an insane amount of (self-imposed) guilt for ordering 3 other games on amazon last week, if only I knew!  Good to know though that there is a local small business that we can support in the future though!!

 

 

Hubby and the Girls (in their Easter best) checking out the game selection at Zombie Planet

Ending the day with a little Tsuro by fire and glow-stick light

 

Hello Again

Wow, just about a year since my last post...ah well life gets in the way.

 

Anyway...we haven't been doing much computer/console gaming lately but we have been doing LOADS of tabletop/board gaming. 

 

It's like a whole new world was opened up to us when I ran across a random episode of  TableTop by Geek and Sundry. 

 

And in other news we attended PAX East again this year!  We had an incredible time (more to come on that once I edit the pics) and learned a lot!  Well I did anyway...particularly when we attended a panel on education gamification, which I think gave me some new educator-parent ideas on how to teach through games. 

 

Soooo I guess the point of this post is that hopefully I will be dusting off this blog and posting reviews on games we play as adults and on games we play (and/or make!) with the kiddos.  No promises but hopefully it wont fall by the wayside again. 

 

And with that I leave you with some PAX East 2013 pics...