It's All about the Game!

You hear it often at our house- the words, "Let's play a game!" Our kids love games! We play all kinds and we brought many new ones into the house at Christmas time. Some new favorite are Blink- a fast paced visual perception card game, Ziggity- a card game by the maker of Cranium, Blokus- sort of a spatial orientation game, Zooreka- a game by Cranium that allows you to build a zoo by using resources gathered on rolls of dice, and finally The Settlers of Catan- pictured above and is a game of building settlements by accumulating resources and being clever.

Our kids will play Settlers as often as they can and it is so funny to see the strategy used by each of them. One will set out to build as much road as he can (this is so fitting for a 4yo boy, don't you think?), one will save and trade up for as many development cards as she can (usually earning the largest army card), and the third and oldest does a little bit of everything. Me? I like to build as many cities as I can and totally conquer the whole island! This is such a great game because the kids really like the challenge and the idea of settling lands and we as parents can stay in the game because it is interesting. Our 8yo son likes to press his advantage every now and then showing his game strategy prowess. The first person with 10 victory points wins.

We spent two solid hours playing this game yesterday afternoon with the 4you staying in for nearly all of that time! Impressive really. Now we are anxious to buy the expansion sets for it- Seafarers of Catan and Knights and Cities of Catan. We could have been doing some other things even other school assignments, but what a fantastic way to spend the afternoon all together playing a game. Got to catch these moments while we can!

Seeing as how we expect a foot of snow or so in the next few days, I'm thinking we'll get some more game time in!