New Gaming Group

Last month (February), we did the History of Games at our monthly local HE themed group session. It was a chance to play lots of different games including Minecraft, Fox and Geese, Nine Men's Morris amongst others. We also learnt something of the history of dominoes and created a joint effort quiz-of-games boardgame.

We followed this up by a visit to a local games shop to try out some new, more modern card and board games. That was so much fun, that we've now arranged a monthly session.

Today we had 29 children plus their parents enjoying playing lots of different games. The age range was from 5 to 16 with an even spread of ages. So lovely to see so many older home educated young people in the same space :)

The blokes who own Imagination Gaming are very keen gamers themselves and are fully aware of the educational and social value of gaming. They have other gamers in the shop constantly it seems, playing a variety of games, especially Magic the Gathering which seems very popular. Imagination Gaming have a really varied selection of games in their online store.

They also take games into schools, clubs and libraries and are often to be found at community events. They are so familiar with the games that they can tailor the sessions to whatever is needed and they also run regular free family games days in the shop.

My children's favourite games so far have been City of Zombies and Tell Tale.
City of Zombies is a co-operative game where all the players work together to create maths equations to stop the zombies entering their house. Players can work at their own pace, there's no playing against the clock, and they can use any of the four arithmetic functions (+,-,x,:) plus square numbers and square roots to get the required total. Great for familiarising children with times tables and number bonds.
Tell Tale is a game that encourages creativity by having players use their imaginations to tell a story. Very popular with The Girl :)

I enjoyed playing Ah-Harr and Snake Oil today. Ah-Harr is like pairs with a twist. YOu have to find groups of 3 cards which can be grouped according to colour, number or symbol. Jewels are worth extra points and tricksy parrots can steal your jewels. A simple game to learn, but enough strategy to make it interesting for a wide age range.
Snake Oil is another creative game where you have to use your imagination to convince another player to buy your 'invention' over the other players' creations.

I love it when we find a local HE session that attracts older ones too :)

Disclaimer: I have received no payment or free stuff for bigging up this games shop. I just think they are great and deserve some custom :)

Myths and Monsters

Today is our local HE group themed session. This month's theme was myths and monsters.
the Girl made a monster museum and wrote and hosted a quiz. That was such good fun, especially as all the children kept shouting out the answers excitedly. I think the teams all scored very similar points :)

Quite a few of the children enjoyed making glove and sock monsters. I loved to see how different they all were as the children cut off various fingers and wristbands which they re-attached to make arms, legs, tentacles and tails. Boykin is making a quiverful of arrows to hang over one of the purple eye tentacles.  I was impressed with how much sewing they all did :)
Meet No Hander and his pet, Pompy.

It was a beautiful day and we were very pleased to see that some of the daffodils and crocuses that we planted in the garden last year were in full flower. Unfortunately, the battery on my phone died so you'll have to take my word for it ;) The Girl helped the little girls to plant some more bulbs, scatter some poppy seeds and do some weeding. We're hoping to plant some more seeds next month as one of the other mothers has applied for some wildflower seeds for us too :0)