Games Galore

Today we played a plethera of games, both in the flesh and online. Here were some we conquered today:

Monopoly Jr: Went well, Iggy explained to his brother that you didn't need to have a four dollar bill to pay the banker four dollars, but that you could use two two-dollar bills. He was completely amazed to learn that you could also use a one-dollar bill and a three-dollar bill to make up the four dollar fine. I took this opportunity to explain to the boys that there is no such thing as a three- or four-dollar bill. Oh, yes, and the game we bought was used and when we opened it we realized there wasn't enough "money" in it to even play the game, so we had to make more money to play. Which turned into a fair amount of practice writing those pesky numbers. Who knew?

12 and Back: A great game we learned one day at a local homeschool store. All it takes are three dice, a piece of paper with 1-12 written on it, and a few place markers. (In our case, a button, a miniature dog, and a miniature owl. Guess who was the lame button?)The rules of the game: Player rolls 3 dice and adds them in any grouping of the 1, 2 or 3 dice to make the numbers 1-12. Beginning with #1, the player moves his marker up the board in sequence as he is able to "make" each number. A player may make as many numbers as is possible with each roll and moving accordingly. Which means that when you roll and 1, 2 and 3, you can not only move past the 1, 2 and 3 on the board, but you can also move to 4 (1+3), the 5 (2+3) and the 6 (3+2+1). And the coolest thing is when the kids GET THAT!!

Lego.com: Imagine this, but there are some tough logic games on that site! We got hung up on Junkbot Undercover...which is a game where you basically have to use a certain amount of Legos to get Junkbot from one side of the screen to the other. The upper levels are actually pretty hard!

http://www.vocabulary.co.il/games2/hangman/hman.php : A cool site where they have a hangman game (actually Hangmouse) that has a ton of different topics and words for the kids to figure out. They get seven chances to guess letters, but if they get a letter that's actually in the word, the "chance" doesn't count. I kept telling them "start with vowels!!!" and to my delight, they knew what they were.

Wheel of Fortuneish Thing: : This is something I started on a dry erase board awhile back, but haven't done it for awhile. (I think the game died about the time roofing started...) I think of three or four bigger words that the boys use a lot, but probably have no clue how to spell, and I write them on the dry erase board with some letters missing. Then sometime over the course of the day and pondering, we figure out what the word is (whether it is from sounding out what's there and guessing what the whole word is, or getting clues for what the word is from me, and then having to figure out what letters are missing). Today's big words were transformer, unicorns, and bloodhound.



Sidenote: Iggy wanted to know why, in the word bloodhound, does the double o not make the sound as in boo. I said "Great question, never even noticed that before." Then later, when he again volunteered to read the bedtime story, and came across the word to, asked "why does that make the oo sound if it only has one o?" "Good question," said his mother. He said English makes no sense. Well, thought I, at least you figured that out early.