One of the things that I am excited about, as a parent, is sharing things I love with my kids. Of course not all things can be shared right away. There are many limiting factors, language, comprehension, skills. They are even different for each of my three kids.
A brief introduction: Lady J and I have three kids. Sassy is 8, Spiderman is 6, and Buddy is (almost) 4.
On a recent Saturday, Sassy asked me to play a game of Monopoly with her. She has shown an interest in playing many different games including card games (Go Fish, Crazy Eights, 31), board games (checkers, chess), and video games (Minecraft, Lego: Marvel). We set up and started to play. It was not long before Spiderman was asking to play, so I let her take over for me. This led to Sassy strong-arming her way through the game. She was intent on winning, but Spiderman was playing for a different purpose. This got me thinking. Maybe we could play a game together, with different rules for the same game.
The following Friday night as I was tucking them in to bed, Sassy asked if we could play Monopoly the next day. I was ready. I told her that I had been thinking about the game from the previous week and I had some ideas to improve the experience.
After breakfast the next morning, we sat down to set up the board for the game. Instead of 2 stacks of cash, I put aside 4 (one for each of us and 1 for each of Spiderman and Buddy). This would allow for drop-in/drop-out players without interrupting the game between Sassy and myself. Drawn by our focused attention, Spiderman and Buddy both came up and asked to play. They were each given a stack of cash and their choice of tokens.
For Buddy, this was very exciting, so he took 2 game tokens: the Hat and the Battleship. Also, he refused to put them on the board. I can work with that. On his turns, I told him to put his pieces on the board, then roll the dice. This was an acceptable exchange for him. After rolling and moving he would pick up his pieces again, to wait for his next turn. Sometimes he would assign 1 die to each token (moving the Hat 5 and the Ship 3 for example). I had to reassure Sassy that this extra random element would not negatively affect the rest of the game. There are many things a young boy can be doing on a Saturday mornning, so he didn't play long.
For her part, Spiderman was only partially interested in the game. She was on board with rolling the dice, and counting her move, and would purchace property if encouraged to do so, but not much beyond that. There wasn't enough running around or standing on your head to keep her attention.
Eventually, as predicted, the 2 youngest got bored and went on to other activities. Leaving Sassy and I to play out the game. But then, Lady J decided to join (taking on one of the unused stacks of cash and starting a bit behind in the property acquisition phase of the game). At one point Spiderman came back, and played under the wing of Lady J (but maintaining her own cash and properties).
Sassy was able to participate in all the game's many facets from counting money, to trading, to basic strategies. This wasn't her first time playing a board game, or even Monopoly. She was introduced gradually, like her siblings were that day. One day they will all be able to play more complicated games.
One other thing that happened later in the game, was that Lady J and Spiderman started running out of cash. At that point (at a suggestion from Lady J), the bank started paying whatever they couldn't afford. This was to allow everyone to continue playing until the game ended - without anyone getting kicked out.
From 1 game all 5 members of my small family were able to play, each with very different goals, and a different (customized) experience. It was not unlike being a Game Master, with each player having access to different rule sets or abilities.
Today we played Monopoly, who knows what we can accomplish tomorrow...I know I have some ideas.
No comments:
Post a Comment