little humans, BIG GAMES

Although I haven't posted anything for a week, it's not for lack of gaming at our house.  In fact, we've played so much that it has become difficult to keep up with blogging. The kids, tired from a week of school and play, insisted that we play Kingdomino again before bedtime. Kingdomino  is an award-winning game that has been popular with reviewers and consumers alike.  At the time of this writing, it is listed as one of the top 200 games on BoardGameGeek , and inside the top 25 in the family games category.  Although it is quite easy to play, I have hard time explaining the rules with clarity.  I've typed them out and deleted them several times.  Instead, I offer this excellent video from Watch It Played .  Rodney Smith has become one of my best virtual friends when introducing games to the kids. I've had my eye on Kingdomino for a while, and finally purchased it while shopping for Benjamin's birthday presents.  It is r...

We're a little early with this post, but... HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!!!   This morning we chose to play Hanzi , a game originally released by EmperorS4, and re-released in English by Deep Water Games .  Hanzi is a matching game in which players must find Chinese characters, or hanzi.  Each player is initially given three 'task cards' which show the hanzi that they must try to find.  On their turn, the player chooses one of their three task card, and tries to locate that character by finding two matching hanzi among the tiles.  If they do not find a match, the player receives a 'creation token' and their turn is over. A player can choose to use one creation token at the start of their turn to reveal three tiles, instead of two.  They may also use two creation tokens to swap task cards; I chose to omit this rule so that the kiddos would have to use the tasks they were given. If a match is found, the player takes the tiles, draws a new task card, and ...

We're overdue for a post, so here's a quickie on one of our favorites. No Stress Chess is the perfect way to introduce your young ones to one of the world's oldest board games.  We received ours as a Christmas present from my parents in 2017, and we play it quite often.  Genevieve (3) beat me twice in a row during this session. The game board is two-sided: one has the positions and names of the various pieces, while the other is a standard chessboard.  For beginners, there is a deck of cards that shows each piece's name and its movement rules.  Each player draws a card on their turn and MUST move that piece.  If the piece on the card has been removed from the game, or if its movement is blocked, the player loses their turn.  Gameplay continues until checkmate.  Genevieve knows all of the pieces' names, except the bishop, which she calls the monster. The kids came to work with me on a weekend last month, and Isaiah challenged our program di...