Zooloretto Dice
The first play through
of this with my girls we didn't quite play all the rules, we kinda
skipped the minuses at the end. They are only 4 and 5 after all.
It's quite an easy
little game and they understand the set collection aspect. My four
year old even does a pretty good job at checking off the boxes
herself.
There's very little
depth in this game although playing it with an adult in the mix the
second time through it was clear that some strategy could be applied
to the game with minds a little more mature than my girls possess at
this stage.
The girls were however
enthusiastic about the game asking to play it again not long after
our first play through. The second time we played we did so with all
aspects involved and came across the real competition part of the
game. Who can get those bonus points checked off first. We had a
small issue with my youngest deciding that if she couldn't mark off
the bonuses when she felt she should she didn't want to play. So I
had to decide what was more important here, playing right, or merely
just playing. We let her mark off whatever boxes she wanted and
endeavored to remember which ones were actually valid during
scoring. Because in the end it didn't really matter the point was to
play the game together.
Winning
We played a number of
games together over the last few days, our little family. My husband
played a game of Tsuro with the girls while I sat her here and told
you all about spies. And we came across something that's possible
the hardest lesson when it comes to gaming. The desire to win. Miss
5 did not win this game, a game she plays quite well, and it resulted
in a lot of pouting, announcing 'but I wanted to win' and not wanting
to play again.
To be honest I was kind
of proud with her. There were no tears, just many pouts, and there
certainly were no tantrums. This is quite frankly better than I've
seen some adults achieve. She didn't want to play the game again, so
we didn't force it, and two days later she was again playing it this
time with me in the mix as well. Once again she didn't win, in
fact miss 4 did, she was very tired from having a very late night the
night before and I don't think there was even more than a seconds
pouting involved. She's growing up so fast.
Now that I've
celebrated my girl here's the issue I have been thinking on. I think
that it's hard to learn to lose gracefully, for anyone, and yet an
important life skill all the same. And my confession is I have an
element of 'pouting' involved in my game playing. It's not that I
mind losing a game, I don't so long as I had fun playing it. However
my husband and I have played a lot of the 'Game of Thrones LCG' in
the past, spent way too much money on it as well, and the fact is, I
just plain suck at this game. I do. I'm aware of it, and even
though that's the case I've played more games of this than almost
any other game in my life, with the exception of Magic the gathering
back in my college days. In all those games I dare say I could count
how many games I've managed to win on maaaybe two hands. I'm into
a 'I must win' kinda person but it's just not fun being pummeled
into the ground, it isn't, and when it happens time and time and time
again to be honest it wears very thing. Now the thing is, I don't
think that this is a simple case of 'I didn't win it I don't want
to play it' such as miss 5 demonstrated to us the other day, I think
it's a more more reasonable position . Maybe I’m wrong. I know my
husband doesn't seem to think so, partly due to the fact that my
lack of interest in the game now results in his inability to play it
as often as he'd like.
Opinions, ideas and a
discussion welcome on this topic.
Language
Another topic that
arose whilst playing Tsuro was the language of the game. Dragons is
fint, and path is fine, but oh 'you're dead' made for some
interesting discussions.
DH: “You can't place
that tile sweetie it'll kill you.”
Miss 4: “But I want
to be dead.”
DH: “But you can’t
deliberately kill yourself hun it's against the rules.”
Miss 4: “But I want
to kill myself.”
Miss 5: “If you want
to be dead [miss 4] I can help you.”
To be honest I was in
fit of giggles as this was going on. However it was suggested that
the language f the game be looked at, they are still babies after all
talking about dying and killing each other. So we started talking of
running each other off the board. As grown up we don't even really
think about the language of these things some times but when the
words coming out of yours kids mouth sound so out of place when you
play these games with them I figured perhaps we need to think more
about what we say. They know it's just a game, so maybe it really is
ok. I don't for a moment believe that children are stupid and will
translate what they see and hear in games to reality. And yet I see
examples of it in my to every now and again. Miss 5 has told me in
no certain turn that the Doctor is in fact real and that she wants
him to come visit her in his Tardis. In fact she believed in him
before she every believed in Santa. So maybe right now for their
age it does matter. It was an interesting topic to think on, I’ve
heard of 7 year olds playing zombie games, great for them, and maybe
the year and a half between them and my miss 5 makes all the
difference in that level of understanding, maybe that 7 year old is
just special, I’m not sure, but I’m fairly certain my kids aren't
ready for that sort of theme and the language that comes with that
sort of game. I know when I was about seven my parents tried to get
me to alert them to the presence of cops should I see them while we
were driving places by saying 'pigs' I told them it wasn't nice to
call people pigs and henceforth cops have been 'kittens', language
matters and I’ll be guided by them as time goes by. Still
inappropriate language leads to rather wonderful conversations like
the one above.
Here are some cute pictures from this memorable game of Tsuro (in the sun)
Here are some cute pictures from this memorable game of Tsuro (in the sun)
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| Just before Miss 4 defeated us all. |
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| Miss 5 |
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| Miss 4 |
