Keep those games alive!

Children are inventive, original and very messy. As they get older they start losing these nice qualities. Some manage to hold on. This is what I am trying to do with this blog. My brother - a great inventor of games - kept most of my childhood happily occupied with his original games. This blog started out as a way to keep those games alive. Do read the first few posts to enter his wonderful world. Reader contributions welcome :)

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

And we bounce back!

So it's been a long while. The inventing genes have happily passed on to the younger generation, and I catch the kiddo doing his own bit of inventing. Here's one of the first games I saw him play all by himself.

This involves getting all the stuffed animals you have on a big bed, and engaging them in a free-for-all wrestling match. Every animal that lands on the floor is 'out'. The winner of course, is kiddo.

This was a year ago.

He's now 4, and is game for some cerebral activity. We were waiting at the doctor's and the "Keep Silent" board gazed at me reproachfully as kiddo's voice touched new decibels. What else could I do but invent a game. This is like a rapid fire quiz round. I rattle off names of colours and he says "YES" or "NO" depending on whether this colour is in the Rainbow. Variations include saying "Frog" instead of green, "Sky" instead of blue, etc. You could also think of anything other then a rainbow.

I don't think we noticeably reduced decibel levels, but we sure had fun waiting :)