we've been doing "Baby Signs" with our daughter. A week or two
ago, she learned a new sign: She holds her hand flat, and with the
other hand makes a tapping/poking motion on the surface of her hand.
It means "board game". Can you see me beaming from here?
She loves playing her board games. Of course, as a 14-month-old,
"playing" means examining the bits, moving them around the board
fairly randomly and occasionally scattering them about. So far, we
play a lot of Chutes and Ladders (Sesam Street edition) where she
moves the pieces around the board (not even uniformly occupying
squares) and spins the spinner in whatever order she deems
appropriate. She has gotten down the notion that you move the pieces
a space at a time, even if her sense of "space" is any point roughly
an inch and a half from where it was before.
We also play a lot of Enchanted Forest and the last time we played was
quite a success. I put all the trees face down and asked her,
"Where's the wolf?" (The bottoms of the trees have pictures from fairy
tales) I then picked one up, looked at it and showed her, saying
"That's not a wolf, those are 7-league boots?" From then on she
picked up the trees one at a time, and I asked her if it was the wolf,
until she found it.
We've also tried Frechdachs (her first Reiner Knizia game) though she
doesn't seem to enjoy that one as much. She takes the bits in and out
of the "suitcases", but it doesn't hold her attention as long.
Cathedral has also been fun, though she's more interested in
scattering the pieces than putting them on the board, but that may
have just been a product of her mood.
Finally, Face-it has been a big success. Face-it has plastic pieces
that rest on a lattice grid. The other day, I put out the board,
grabbed the bag and took a piece out, placing it on the board. I then
handed her the bag. She drew a piece out, and put it on the board.
We proceeded to take turns, drawing and placing until the board was
full.
She'll be getting a few more good ones for Christmas.
Okay, so by most people's standards these aren't really "playing a
game", but as a father it's pretty exciting, especially that she'll
frequently be playing with a toy and she'll scoot over to me and sign, "Board game?"
(Also, see the
version of this post for links to the games)
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