Friday Games: Mystery at Hogwarts

Ages and ages ago when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone came out, a friend gave me Harry Potter Mystery At Hogwarts Game for my birthday.  It plays a lot like Clue, but there’s some fun differences added in.

As you can see, the game board is set up to be the school.  You roll two dice and move around the board gathering clues to figure out who cast the spell and in what room (see, just like Clue).  That part’s the same.  Here’s where it’s different.

You can choose to move the ghost instead of yourself and make people reveal cards to you without making guesses.  Also, if you roll a “one” (which is a Hogwarts seal), you draw special cards that can protect you from effects, reveal hidden passages, or complete missing stairs.

 

If you’re familiar with Clue, than you already know how the game works, but this adds in the extra layer of strategy with the ghost and some more randomness with the Hogwarts cards.

 

I would say it probably requires at least a mid-second grade reading level to play it well because my boys struggled from time to time to find the right names.  It also requires kids who don’t feel the need to tell everyone what they have and can hold their cards without showing them to EVERYONE.

 

On the random to strategy side, I’d put it closer to random.  Movement is based on a die roll and the cards you get at the beginning are completely random.  But, it’s a lot of fun.

Friday Games: My Dwarves Fly

I gave Jeff this game a few years ago because the title cracked me up.  We’d played it a few times, but not all that often, and then we taught it to the boys………  Who think it’s the most fun and hilarious game ever.

The set-up is simple, there are monster cards and treasure cards.  At the start of your game you choose however many you want of each type up to 5 cards.  At the end of your turn you draw back up to 5.

 

Treasure cards can change abilities of your “soldiers,” it can make them stronger, luckier, whatever the card says.  You can also play them on your opponents “soldiers” to make them weaker, blind, etc.  My boys haven’t quite gotten the strategy down, so they spend all their time drawing army cards and collecting this giant army.

 

Which is rather silly because in battles you can only have up to 5 guys, but they don’t’ seem to care.  On your turn you play a card, there are 3 main types you play: character (new soldier), ability (on yourself or opponents), and battles.

When a battle happens you choose your warriors and take turns rolling for each character. 

Then your battle is scored.  You have a fight score, and a gold score.  If your fight score is highest you win the battle and get the gold.  But wait!

Your opponent might sneak in a one time use card that changes the score “Your monster was scared,” or “He’ll never notice,” and suddenly someone else is winning or you’re sharing the gold!

 

All in all, I’d have to say there are many pluses to “My Dwarves Fly.”

 

Skills worked on: addition, subtraction, small strategy (very small), reading

Strategy to Chance ratio: High Chance, low strategy

Friday Games: Lego Hogwarts game

Last year for my birthday one of the kids gave me “ ,” and they were very proud of it.  The set up is relatively simple if you’re used to putting together Lego sets, it’s the play that can get complicated.

When it is your turn you roll the dice and then either slide parts of the board, rotate, or use the Marauders map to move through walls.

Your goal?  To be the first person to gather all of the homework that you’ve left around the castle and get back home.

 

Once the game is set up the play is about 30-45 minutes long.  Which means it can be a little long for the attention span of Princess, but the boys enjoy playing it.

It’s a lot of fun to gather the supplies and try to figure out how to best manipulate the board to suit your goals.

 

That being said, it’s also frustrating to almost be to a room, and then have the board completely change on you.

 

On the scale of chance versus strategy, this game is further towards strategy.  You also need to be good with spatial awareness and thinking through a few steps ahead.  All good skills to be learning.

 

If you like the idea of Lego games, but this seems a little long for your kids’ attention span, then I’d suggest some of their smaller games, we really enjoyed the Monster one, it’s a variation on tic tac toe.  That has very quick game play, and I’m sure I’ll be writing more detail about it later.

Friday Games: roleplaying games

 

In case you can’t tell my boys love to play games.  Jeff and I love to play games.  Princess loves to play games she thinks she’ll win, otherwise she has no interest.

 

Theoretically every Friday night Jeff and I get together with a few friends and we play RPG’s.  We make up characters and play through scenarios based on what our character would do.  My boys are incredibly jealous of this and have asked when they can do it too.

 

Our standard reply is: “You have to be able to read well on your own and be able to do math in your head.”

 

Each time they ask this I notice they’re suddenly working much harder at their math and reading.

A few years ago we bought Hasbro Heroscape Marvel Game Setand it’s a fun game, but way too hard for my boys.  It’s designed for people who know a lot more math and can remember more rules.  The rule book says 8 and up, but I’d guess more like 10.

 

But, my boys love it.  After rounds and rounds of their made up rules, consisting of “If I shoot you, your guys loses and is dead, if you shoot me it misses.”  That’s not really fun for me.  We now have some set rules.

 

Their guys have 3 hit points.  So it will take 3 hits for them to die.

Bad guys only have two hit points.  The Master has 4 hit points.

The boys figures move 4, the bad guy figures move 2.

The game came with a set of dice, they’re similar to Fudge Dice: Multicolor GM Pack (20 Dice Set) .   Two sides have shields, and two sides have red heads, and two sides are blank.

 

We say the shields count as defense, and the heads as hits.  Blanks are nothing happened.

 

So, if I roll one head and two shields, but Batman rolls two shields and two heads; then I do not hit him.  He successfully blocked my attack.

Bad guys get one action a round.  They can either move or hit the good guys.

Good guys get two actions a round.

The blue things on the board are from the game, they have numbers on them from 1-3.  We used those as healing.  If your character was hurt then you moved onto that space and healed that much.

 

I have different levels of minions, masters have 4 hit points, lieutenants have 3 hit points, and minions have 2.  They roll the same number of dice as they have hit points.

 

The boys love this, and I love it because I can sneak in a lot of math practice without them noticing, and a healthy does of strategy and higher order thinking skills.

 

Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky…….

linking up over at All Things Beautiful and Becoming a Strong Woman of God

The state of our game shelves

Yes I said shelves.

It despereately needed cleaning and thinning out.  This is actually after I removed several games.  SEVERAL.

Some have been given away.  A very few, I think 3, maybe.  Most have been put in storage until such time as the kids are a little older.  Empire at Arms, Tigris and Euphrates, Torres, all games Jeff loves, but the kids (more specifically the boys, Princess isn’t too into games yet) need to get older.  Much, much older.  As in AT LEAST 10.

But now, we can get games out without knocking anything down.

Friday games will continue next week, as I don’t do well blogging when Jeff is off, and this is the first few days off he has had in over a month.  He’s been working weekend to get a problem solved for about a month.

As you can see, I have lots of games to tell you about.  Most of which the kids can play.

So, I’m off to enjoy a day with MY FAMILY.

Review: Amoeba Math

Amoeba Math is one of those unexpected finds.  I was given this at the homeschool convention I went to after talking with the owner for almost an hour.  I bought their board game, Math Gym, but didn’t have the budget to buy Amoeba Math as well.  However he was nice enough to give me a review copy and one to give to ya’ll.  So, score for all of us!

 

I thought about waiting until Friday to post this, and continuing it as part of my Friday Games series, but didn’t want to.  First because I’ve been wanting to get this done forever, but hadn’t because I need pictures.  And second because it’s a computer game.  I’m focusing more on board games there.

Amoeba Math is a fun math review game.  The graphics are somewhat simplistic, but my kids thought they were hilarious.  Especially when their guy got hit by running into a wall, “he made funny sounds Mommy.”   (I need to clean my computer screen, it’s got so many fingerprints)

 

There are several different options to make it work best for you.

 

Game Difficulty- you can choose from Basic, Advanced, Expert, and Master.  Basic only uses single digits and gives the most time.  As you advance in difficulty it becomes and adds in negative numbers!

 

You can also choose what types of problems you want to do.  So far my kids have only done addition, but I’m planning on adding in subtraction soon.

 

 

What I like:

1.  I can choose types of problems and level of difficulty.

2.  It’s very user friendly and the company has easy to understand and use help center (I had problems installing and with their help figured it out).

3.  I can leave one of the boys playing it while I go work with another child, and not worry about their accidentally getting into something else.

 

What I dislike:

1.  Nothing really, it’s a fun game and easy to use.

2.  Not a problem for me, but it IS NOT MAC COMPATIBLE.  This could be a problem for some.  They are working on making it usable for Macs.

 

 

FINAL OPINIONS:

 

My boys are asking to use this for their math instead of their math curriculum, which they like a lot.  Princess is not a game fan like they are.  I’m thinking of making this at least a weekly game, if not more often during summertime.

 

TO BUY:

Amoeba Math is $29.95.  The big bonus: you can try it before you buy, there is a two week free trial.

 

WIN A FREE COPY OF AMOEBA MATH:

 

Super simple, leave a comment with a favorite way to practice math.  Make sure there is an email address included.

 

RULES: Open to US and International.  I’ll pick a winner on July 7 and email them.  If I don’t hear back I’ll pick a new winner.  Make sure I can email you.

 

DISCLOSURE:  I was given a copy of the game to review.  I almost bought it, but it wasn’t in the budget…….I bought the board game instead.

Games with Kids Fridays: Carcassone

One of my goals for the coming school year is to play games on Fridays, and only games.  To achieve that I’m working on collecting some good learning games I can use.

I mentioned buying Math Gym a month or so ago, and how much we enjoy that, so I’ve got math covered, and actually almost any game could be called using math.  Now this one is a higher order thinking game, it employs strategy, but it’s low level enough that with some modifications kids can play it.

Carcassone is a tile laying game that has a little luck built into it based on what you draw, but it’s more controlled randomness than say Monopoly.

You take turns going around building cities, roads, and farms and get points for completing them based on how big it is.  There are several expansions that change the game play, but for ease of play with the kids we don’t really use those.

Here’s our modifications:

1.  No farmers.  Farmers to me is the hardest part of play and the most chancy.  They aren’t scored until the end of the game where they get points for each city they feed.  For little kids this is too long to wait to get their points.  Finishing a town or a monastery is hard enough for them.


2.  Draw two tiles and choose one to play.  This gives them a bit more control of what they’re doing and also forces them to think what is their best play.  Do they want to build a road which gets them 1 point per tile or work on a city which is 2 points a tile?


3.  Limit the number of turns.  This is more of an attention span thing.  We set it up so everyone gets 10 turns, and they know how many turns are left.  This helps keep the game shorter.


4.  Help each other plan and place your tiles.  It’s still competitive and there’s still only one winner, but this way less experienced players get help.

Sharing over at Learning All The Time and Mama Smiles.

Games with Kids Fridays:Adventures in Reading with ZigZag Zebra

One of my goals for the upcoming school year is to convert Fridays to a game day.  We’ll still be playing learning, but it won’t seem like it because we’re playing games.

 

When I was given the opportunity to review Adventures in Reading with ZigZag Zebra for All About Learning Press, I jumped at it.

 

If you’re familiar with file folder games or  Take It To Your Seat Games from Evan-Moor, you’re familiar with this concept.

 

The games come bound in a book, the pages are perforated so you can tear them out and glue them into a file folder if you choose to (I’m storing it differently, you’ll see below).

 

Now, I hate cutting things out, my wrists hurt after a while of cutting, so I set my kids loose on it.  This does mean they’re not cut out perfectly.

 

We’ve only played the first half or so of them, but I think these will easily be added into our rotation of games, and extra bonus, they’re not just limited to reading.

 

{I have to admit, I don’t think this was in the creator’s minds when they did it, but I looked at it and saw easy adaption to other topics}

 

 

Apples for Ziggy- Super simple and easy to play, you pick 5 apples off the tree and if they’re vowels you keep them.

 

My kids loved this because it’s a no brainer for them.  No thinking involved because they’ve got it down flat.  Many requests to play again.

 

 

Ziggy at the Market- Ziggy is going shopping and he can only buy things if he answers questions correctly.  My kids loved the variety of things to buy.  Princess bought all the shoes and the boys bought a little of everything.  Including the top hat Superman tried to wear.

 

In case you’re wondering it didn’t fit.

 

Now in the instructions you’re supposed to review phonograms, but my kids need more review of word cards.  I’ve noticed they’re starting to slack on words they knew before, so I switched it to word cards.

 

And that worked just fine.

 

Treasure Hunt with Ziggy- You pull 3 tiles and see if it’s possible to make a word with that combination of color tiles.  Remember with All About Learning Tiles vowels are red and consonants are blue.

 

It was a great review for my kids and got them thinking of examples of words with two vowels in a 3 letter word.

 

Eventually I started challenging them to think up words to go with the tiles they pulled.  They LOVED that.

 

I’m sure I will have many more posts about these games as we work our way through them.  Especially if I keep to my plan of only games on Friday.

 

And, if you’re wondering how I store my games, here you go.  The board is folded in half and put in the mini-manilla envelope along with the pieces.  They all store very nicely in my box for All About Reading Level 1 (post coming up with how I organize it to work for me).

 

Disclosure: I was given a copy of the games to review, but it was on my to buy list anyways.

THE Math game for the family

So, I started to write a post about going to a homeschool convention, but realized I didn’t have anything super helpful to say, and it was mainly going to be lots of hints of things to come.  I didn’t want to write that.

So (seriously I use that too much), Instead, I’ll just jump write in. 

Math Gym

Here’s the premise, you’re going around the board in either direction to whatever square you want.  You get there by building equations from the tiles you have.  Your numbers can be positive, negative, or exponents (we took out the exponents), and you get operation tiles as well.

I spent a good hour or so talking to the guy there because I didn’t believe him that my 5 year old could play this.  He convinced me, and I bought it.

He was right.

She’s not a huge fan, but she doesn’t like games in general.  The boys who are fans.  LOVE it!

Your goal is to earn money by either landing on squares that give you money or by landing on a workout square where you do math problems (more on that in a second).  Princess worked her way around the board going in a negative direction almost the entire time.  The boys went positive, negative, all over.



When you land on a workout square you grab a card based on your ability.  My kids are all white belts.  That’s first/second grade math.  It goes all the way up through early high school with Algebra 1 and 2.



Our first game took about an hour to play, but this was also my kids first exposure to negative numbers, and they grasped the concept fairly quickly and were making up math problems like aces.

It’s on sale right now for $50 (yes that is a lot, but I think it’s totally worth it).  Considering most of the strategy games we buy cost about the same, and I’m seeing years worth of math practice in this game.  It’s worth it to me.

I LOVE this game (and I’ll have a post up about some of the other games I bought later).  I wanted to talk about this one first because I’m going to have a giveaway coming up soon for their computer game.
Go, look at it, try the online version of it (there’s an online version of the board game), and then discover how cool it is.

PS: I was not paid for this, I did not get a free copy, I bought it and loved it, so that tells you how much I like it.

Fun in the Summer Fun: Stayin’ Cool!

Welcome to the 1st of our Fun in the Summer Fun event! Each Monday until September 7th Mama to 4 Blessings along with Adventures of Mommydom, Sweet Diva, Harvest Moon By Hand, and Sweet Phenomena will be hosting Fun in the Summer Fun link up events.

Here's the line up:

The 1st Monday of each month: link up your "Kid friendly summer activities"

The 2nd Monday of each month: link up your "Kid friendly summer crafts"

The 3rd Monday of each month: link up your "Kid friendly summer receipes"

The 4th Monday of each month: link up your "How to stay cool in the summer heat"

I’m sure this will totally shock you, but it’s hot here.  No really, it was over 100 at the beginning of this week.
I was all set to show you my favorite game from VBS that we do every year for water day, and then this was what happened to the games:

Yes, that is wild pandemonium as 200 kids all throw as much water as they can at each other.  Time ran short to play the games, so instead they just opted for the always popular throw water at each other…….
I was hoping I had pictures from earlier years, but I don’t……
So, here’s the two games, hopefully I explain it well enough you understand.

Drip, Drip, Drop

This is essentially duck, duck, goose with water.  The “ducker” walks around with a cup of water.  As they get to each kid they say, “drip,” and drip a little bit of water on the kid.  The person who is chosen to be it, you say, “drop” and dump the entire cup of water on them.  If you get tagged you sit in the “mush pot,” which is usually a baby pool full of water.

I’m sure you can see people don’t really run all that fast, and are eager to get tagged.

Relay race
Supplies: 2 clear two litter bottles, cups, buckets of water
Divide the kids into two teams.  Have them line up a good ways from the end point with a bucket of water, and each team has a cup.

At the other end one of the teens leading the club would be laying down with a two liter bottle on their head.  The kids run up and try to fill the bottle before the other team.  Ideally, they don’t pour too much on the teen.  Yeah, the “poor” teen gets soaked.  I mean completely and 100 percent soaked.

The horrors.

Hopefully these explanations make sense.  Maybe I’ll have my kids reenact the games………

And because I know you were dying to see how water day was at my club in video form, and a quick shot of me serving food (stay tuned tomorrow for an actual write up of clubs).

I can’t wait to see how ya’ll stay cool.  I have some fun ideas coming up, one that I’ll have to warn Jeff about……..

Bible Alive: Manna from heaven!

 

Our Sunday school class has been very slowly moving through Exodus.  I know, you’re thinking Exodus, 50 chapters about how to build the tabernacle……  Ugh, but the first half is really fun, and I’m going to condense down the last half into a swallowable lesson for them (silly computer doesn’t think swallowable is a word).

 

No, really.  Or, that’s my plan……

 

Well, Sunday’s lesson was about the Israelites and how whiny they are about little things like drinking and eating.  God’ answer was to give them manna from heaven.  Now, I’m sure the Israelites after gathering enough to eat thought to themselves, “Well, we’ve got all of this leftover manna, and I know, we’ll play games with it.”

 

Supplies: large numbers of pom-poms. spoon, chopsticks, or other challenging items to carry stuff, cups

 

GOAL: to be the first team to fill all of their cups with “manna”

 

RULES:  You cannot touch the pom-poms (manna) with your hands.  You can use the spoon, chopsticks or what have you to take it over to the cups.

 

VERDICT: the kids loved this!  We discovered that the spoons were much harder than the chopsticks, but it was really popular.

 

Okay, so it’s not all that spiritual, but it did drill in how manna fell from heaven (when we threw it in the air), and how you could only gather so much before you had a problem……….

 

All right, I’m stretching there, but it was fun.