Family Game Night

One of my favorite childhood memories growing up was family game night. As I recall, and because our childhood minds gauge time differently from our adult minds I could be completely wrong about some of the details, every Friday night we would have a family game night. This was before "the girls", when it was just me and Amy and the rents, and dad had a collection of board games that to this day makes me jealous. I remember Dad reading the rules, explaining them, and always doing a "practice round" (very teacher-like of him!). Then we would play, and boy did I love playing those games! I remember the Las Vegas Nights casino game, horse race game, Uno and Skip-bo (sometimes we'd play these at Grandma's instead) and who knows what else! It was always a surprise. To this day I think that a lot of my "school smarts" came from learning and playing those games. I think people, especially children, acquire a lot of cognitive flexibility from board games and card games, learning things like logic and statistics and cause and effect in a natural, fun way. So, yes, I think that board games can make you smarter!

I have decided to try something similar with the kids. We don't manage to do it every Friday night, but I want to try to play as many games with them this summer as I can so that their brains remain supple and ready to learn, and the beginning of the school year isn't so painful!

One of our favorite games is Multiplication Bingo. We make Bingo boards with multiplication products and then use flashcards to call the numbers. Agustin just sees the equation, and no one can mark a number until he gives us the right answer. It is a complete blast, and he gets good practice with his multiplication tables as well.

Next year we'll be doing addition and subtraction bingo with Nico!