Good Old Fashioned Family Fun
By: Keith
People who have followed this blog for a while know that I love video games. We have roughly 40 Wii games and another dozen or so Xbox games which my kids and I play. I let them play all kinds of video games, and I don’t believe they have a negative impact on their development. As much as I love and respect the video game industry, there is something about old fashioned board and card games that video games will never replace. Sure, Xbox and Wii have Family Game Night as a suite of digitally formatted board games that can be played together as a family. But, there is an inherent problem with it. No matter how accurately they simulate the game itself, Xbox, for one very good reason, cannot replicate the family interaction possible with a board game. The video game forces people to face away from each other and toward the TV — a fatal flaw.
Christmas, Family, Education and Fun:
This Christmas I decided to upgrade our board game collection. The boys aren’t quite old enough for a spirited game of Scrabble, and they’re a bit too old for Candyland. I bought us Apples to Apples Jr. It was an instant success. The kids, my wife and I, my mom and best friend played together and we all enjoyed ourselves. Most games that a 5 year old can play are not also interesting to adults. We parents tend to force ourselves to play as a favor to our kids. That’s not the case with Apples to Apples. And, beyond the fun factor, the game is simple and educational.
The Point of the Game:
The purpose is to match nouns with adjectives. Everybody sits around the table and a green card with an adjective (a word that describes a noun) is placed in the middle. The players pick, from their stash of 5 dealt red noun cards, the card that best fits the adjective on the table. When everybody has played a card (face down so nobody knows who played what) a designated judge picks them up and decides, with whatever reasoning he wants, which card most accurately matches the green adjective card. The winner collects the green card, the judge’s job moves to the next player and everybody gets a replacement red card. The first person to 5 green cards wins the game. It’s fun because everybody has a different reason for picking their nouns, and sometimes people can get pretty creative. For instance, in the picture here, there green card is Frail. My hand of red cards has a variety of options. If I were playing this I would choose Tents as the word I think best fits Frail (because I can’t put up a tent without it falling apart after 10 minutes). Of course every other player has a different set of cards. You can tell how it necessitates creativity on both the player’s part and the judge’s.
When I was a kid my family played Monopoly together. My boys might still be a little too young for Monopoly, but that’s another game that forces family interaction. The best games are ones that employ some creativity, and that do not rely on batteries or gimmicks. Candyland doesn’t require batteries, but it’s also pure chance which makes it no fun for thinking people. Shoots and Ladders is fun to play once but, again, no creativity (although it gets points for teaching counting). Monopoly is good and so is Scrabble. They’re just a little over the kids’ heads. Apples to Apples is the perfect intermediate level game. It’s simple but also requires thinking and strategy. The junior level is meant for kids 9 and up, but I think that’s a bunch of crap. My youngest kid is 5 and he loves it. There’s nothing wrong with video games, but board games hold their own irreplaceable spot. Nothing replaces sitting around a table yelling at each other over a stupid game.
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Me, I think there’s a reason they’re called board (bored?) games. But that’s just me.
Beth. You don’t like board games and card games? We hadn’t played many board games either until recently. I’ve developed a new found respect for them. Give them a try again.
Thanks for stopping by.
We love games around here…..we have tons of them!!
You’re right about the ages. We usually take a year or two off the “recommended” age, depending on what kind of game it is. 
Board games are a must have for the winter!!
Yes, Angie! Especially when we don’t have tons of money to go do activities during the winter and we can’t go play in the snow every day. Board games are the cure for cabin fever!
It’s funny how kids go through stages in the games they like, and how different they can be in what they enjoy. We went through card games, relatively few board games, but two favorites for a very long time were Connect 4, and scrabble – from an early age. (We play multilingual – any word in any language is fair game. It’s a blast, and can get pretty competitive. It’s all about fun and smart plays, and not about the score.)
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We’re kind of old school: Monopoly and Risk. But risk can take forever. We like to do Rock Band and Guitar Hero together. Of course, on vacation, the guys (I have 5) like to break out the World Series of Poker set. I don’t know if that’s good, but at least we’re doing it together….
Steve, I loved Risk when I was a kid. Then it came out for Mac and the board game version seemed way less interesting. But, now that I’m a little older I’m learning to appreciate it again. Great game, you’re right.
Apples to Apples ROCKS.. Though we have the original version, we have a blast when we play it.
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Eric, I played Apples to Apples, the regular version, for the first time this past summer and I loved it. Then I saw the Junior edition and thought the kids would like it. Surprisingly the words aren’t any harder or easier to read, just the concepts. Either way, massively entertaining. Thanks for the comment!