Rainy Days & Mondays...

Are perfect for gaming (forget about getting me down).

We finally got some long awaited packages at the house (actually delivered to Nana's house).  I told Sadie that one of the packages was for her.  It was not the vitamin D and fish oils with omega 3 fatty oils.  It was the Chutes & Ladders the My Little Pony version.  I've been playing games with Sadie that are recommended for ages 4 & up.  Candy-Land is for 3 &Up and Monkey Dunk is for 4 & up.  For different reasons, I agree with both of these age ratings.  Chutes & Ladders is suggested for 2 & up.  This rating is spot on.  It's not that a three year-old can't play all of the games, but some of the movement concepts are trickier than others.  I've learned through observation that counting numbers (Chutes & Ladders) is easier than counting colors (Candy Land).  We played one quick game of Chutes & Ladders on Friday night to get the rules down. Rain was in the forecast for the following day.

The next day was Sunday and it never rained, but Sadie wanted to play games so I obliged.  As I said in my previous blog, I wanted to play Pandemic.  I haven't played it in quite a while and wanted to get the cobwebs out of my addled brain.  Pandemic is a cooperative game, so it allows for some fun solo play.  The object is to save the world from rapidly spreading epidemics.  The players are researchers searching for the cures. This game is lots of fun.  For fans of Risk, think Risk on steroids.  It teaches cooperation and high level strategy.  I've seen it being sold at Toys r Us, so it's not hard to find.


I re-read the rules and set up the game.  Sadie was in charge of the colored blocks.  These blocks represent different diseases that can wipe out life on the planet.  We separated them into the different colors (sorting & classifying) which took a while.  I let Sadie do this while I taught myself the game. After that, she was in charge of handing the blocks to me as different cities became infected.  She called it "The Block Store" and acted like a retail sales-person handing me the requested blocks.

She would play her own games until it was time to "infect" a city with the pandemic blocks.  I called for the "blocker" (her words not mine) and she'd run over, open a pretend door and close it.  She was wearing her new Disney Frozen schoolbag all day, so she would remove this and come over the the playing board and say "Can I help you?"  She counted out the blocks of different colors and went on her merry way, closing the door behind her. Needless to say, between my re-learning the game and the block store, this game took longer than usual.

At the point in the game shown above, it looked good for the researchers to save the world!

The game-play itself was quite good.  Although it took me a bit to get the hang of it and I had to refer to the rules often, it was an exciting game.  I was on the verge of finding a cure for all four diseases when a chain reaction outbreak occurred in the Pacific Rim countries.  All of the red cube were instantly placed on the board as country after country got infected.  When all of the cubes of any one color are used up, the researchers lose.  I was one move away from winning & I lost.  Sadie cheered; she cheered because the My Little Pony game was next on the bill.

An exciting game of Ups & Downs & RAINBOWS!

Mickey Mouse Yogurt - It's all about licensed product at our house!

We had a snack before starting up Chutes & Ladders.  Sadie always surprises me these days.  She remembered a lot from the one game that we played the previous night.  She remembered that ladders go up and chutes (slides) go down.  She even remembered how to get to the finish line.  The concept that is tricky for her right now is the winning spin: it must be the exact number.  So, if you're three spaces away from the end, you must roll three.  I could change the rules for now, but I decided not to.  Part of learning to play games is learning to play by the rules.  One thing I do is make the game about the characters and not about us.  What I mean is that when she or I win, it is Pinky Pie, Rainbow Dash or Princess Twilight Sparkle (The Ponies) who wins.  She gets excited when the character that she is playing wins, sure, but it's not terrible if another character wins.  I figure that this is a way of easing her into the concept of winning and losing.

We played two games before dinnertime.  Sadie loves spinning the spinner.  There's no dice in this game, so I have nothing to catch as they fly across the table.  Sometimes she spins it time and time again making it impossible to see the number.  What I do like about the game-board itself is that the spaces are numbered 1-100.  I can help her count and tell her which space to put her game piece on.  For example: 53 is "Five-Three" and "Fifty-three".  In the long run, it doesn't matter who wins.  To be honest, this is quite a good game.  The concept of ladders moving the pieces ahead quickly is balanced by the slides sending them back.  Theses are both varying lengths, so a player can be at the bottom of the board and be moved to the top and vice-versa.  As a game player, I love that.  It's not the ponies, I swear it's not.  This was followed by dinner: grilled chicken wraps.

And Monday...

Monday's weather was much like Sunday: partly cloudy with a high chance of rain. We decided to play some games in the afternoon.  So, after lunch we played a quick game of memory.  In keeping with the theme of the household -it was a character product. We have Dora Memory and Scooby-Doo Memory.  I went with Scooby-Doo; it brings back memories of the Saturday mornings of my own childhood.  This even comes with a little Scooby-Doo figure.  "Zoinks!" Shaggy would say.

My Little Ponies was on TV while we were playing this game.  I was afraid we'd cause some sort of cartoon universal catastrophe.  But all that happened is that the predicted rain never came.

Scooby-Doo looks on

This was one big game, with plenty of cards to match up, but Sadie managed to match all of the pictures.  It takes some doing to keep her interested after days of playing board games.  Lots of cheering and high fives were given.  At the end of it all we went outside for a swim.  All in all a great "rainy day."