Saturday, February 4, 2012

Games We Love to Play

Over the past few months our children have finally reached the ages where we can truly play family games together.  We enjoy many of the classic games such as Sorry, Uno, Old Maid, and Go Fish.  We've also found some of the newer games to be a ton of fun.  My personal favorites so far are Bananagrams and Blokus.  (Okay, so I'll admit Bananagrams is waaay over our children's heads.  Mostly they just try to spell a word or two out of the letters.  My husband and I enjoy playing Bananagrams enough for the whole family so I felt it worthy of being included on this list.)


Side Note: Our six year old has recently discovered the game of chess.  I've played against him several times over the past couple of weeks and frankly I'm floored that he actually understands all the movements each piece can make.  (I don't think I understood chess until I was well into middle school).  An adult playing against a six year old in chess isn't exactly challenging, but the point is he learns from his mistakes so each time he gets a little bit wiser and thus plays better.

Now, back to the other games... 
If you haven't played Uno in a while (like 20 years or more) then I must remind you that this is not a quick game.  Though a couple of times we've played a game in about 20 minutes, most of the time it takes almost 45 minutes to an hour to play just one game.  Several times we've just had to set a time limit and call it quits.  :-/

Sorry can be equally long and painful at times.  It's a bit easier to manage because if you want a shorter game then just play with 2 pawns per player instead of the full 4.

Blokus
Old Maid and Go Fish are both pretty quick and simple games.  Perfect for filling in the dead time while waiting for food at a restaurant or for waiting in a doctor's office.  I haven't tried either of these (yet) but that's about the time it takes to finish one game.

Blokus... Now this game can take as little or as much brain power to play as you want to put into it.  It's colorful and engaging for the children, but challenging enough for adults to keep our interest too.  The goal is to play all of your pieces, but it's not as easy as it looks.

If you enjoy Scrabble then you will surely like Bananagrams.  There are several different ways to play and the instructions include a shorter version of play as well.  My husband and I can typically play one game the regular way in about 25 minutes, or we can play the shorter version in about 5 minutes.  This one really makes you use your brain but the challenge is worth it!


Blokus photo by Greg Aleknevicus
Bananagrams photo by CenturyHouseGifts.com