Introducing Zooloretto Dice, WINNING! and Language.

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)

Just before Miss 4 defeated us all.

Miss 5

Miss 4