M. Dalrymple-Lepore

OK, I need a clue.

DH and I decided to pull out the Scrabble board, and of course DS (5)
wanted to play. As DS doesn't know (or show knowledge) of a lot of
words right now, I was helping him. I'm not sure if that was a good
idea or not, but that's what I did. And we limited words to 5 letters.
I think I was aiming for a "dog/pig/cat/sat" game of Scrabble. This
does not require much on my part, as dog/cat/sat is normally what I can
come up with. DH, however, commonly comes up with words like "vaunt" .
. . Which led to a discussion of how we want to do the whole game
thing. Like, it's not fun for DH if he has to hold himself back. It's
not fun for me to lose, or see our child frustrated and sad because
he's losing.

As a child, my father always let me win . . . and I felt like I was too
useless to win something on my own. OTOH, my mom never held back at
all, and I felt like I'd never be smart enough to challenge her. And
so very quickly I never wanted to play any games with my parents. So I
want a middle ground. But DH is concerned that we *tell* Steven "do
your best" but when it comes down to it, we hold back so that he
doesn't lose by a huge margin. I know very soon he will be winning on
his own, but in the meantime I am very afraid of screwing this up.

And I know a lot of this stems from my own issues-- I feel stupid a
lot, and get discouraged if I lose all the time. And DH is very smart,
this stuff is easy for him . . .

I don't know. This making sense to anyone? Maybe Scrabble is just a
bad game?

Thanks,
Melanie

[email protected]

In a message dated 10/19/03 10:05:24 AM, si1verkitten@... writes:

<< Maybe Scrabble is just a
bad game? >>

I think Scrabble is a bad game in general. <g>

My whole life people have said because I was "good with words" I should be
good at Scrabble, but Scrabble is about math and spatial stuff I don't have.
It's about being able to rearrange things in your head and read them. What's
about my speed is the medium-level Spell or Starve on Neopets.

Yes, I can spell, and yes I know a lot of words, but I use them in the real
ways they were intended, not in the artificial Scrabble-world. So for one
thing, Scrabble doesn't teach spelling. It rewards a very strange and otherwise
useless skill--take some random letters and see if you can shuffle them in your
head until you see a pattern. Or KNOW the patterns and see what you can
make.

You know what my kids liked MUCH better and seems similar as far as the
surface of what skill is being learned? Hangman. We have computer hangman, the
Ken Winograd game which you can download. It's $15 or $10 but VERY much worth
it in our lives thusfar. We had it on the oldest Mac and we have it on the
new one. That can be played cooperatively or a child can play it on his own.
There are definite liklihoods. R is more likely than G, just in general, in
English. But if you get a G at the end of a word it's worth guessing "n" or
"i" to see if it's an "ing" ending. Kids will start to pick stuff up like that,
and if they're Scrabble-minded it will help with that eventually.

When my kids were little we had Ravensburger kids' games. They're way better
than the lame Candy Land kind of American stuff. We got some of them from
Discovery Toys and others from hoity toy stores. One of their favorites, still
played in the past few months by Holly and her friends, is "Eureka," about
gold miners, and there's a little train as the "timer." Sometimes you roll the
train and it moves one space (it's a hex-grid board) and when the train gets to
town, you all count your gold.

That game involves dice, but no numbers past five, and no reading.

Others we played which didn't involve reading were the "first games" (where
the dice were shapes or colors, not even numbers), Ghost Party/Midnight Party
(has been published twice with different names), The Squirrel game (harder to
do because the pieces are more fragile), and there are some other newer
Ravensburger kids' games since my kids got older. They're German, and people living
in Europe can get them more easily.

OH!!! Labyrinth. That's GOOD.

A game collecting friend of mine has one (I think by that same company) that
involves trees (cardboard standup evergreens that go to the ground) and a
candle. The candle moves, and you're elves or pixies or something and you can
only move in the shadow. So there are literal shadowed spaces and light spaces,
which change when the candle is moved.

Doing something which is totally beyond a child's abilities will just
frustrate everyone involved.

I recommend the games Set (which kids can be really good at but adults can be
confused by) and Five Crowns, both by the same company. Both card games, but
one is laying down cards and finding relationships, and the other is kind of
like rummy and gin, but not exactly. Better.

Sandra

Christine ONeal

When we play games with my son who is 4, we let him win 2 out of 3 games. I try to set it up so it isn't too obvious that I'm letting him win in the games that he does win. I let him lose every third game or so so he knows what losing is like and gets used to it. Mostly we try to play games cooperatively if we can, with no winner or loser. Scrabble seems like it could be done that way. Hope this helps.

Christy

"M. Dalrymple-Lepore" <si1verkitten@...> wrote:
OK, I need a clue.

DH and I decided to pull out the Scrabble board, and of course DS (5)
wanted to play. As DS doesn't know (or show knowledge) of a lot of
words right now, I was helping him. I'm not sure if that was a good
idea or not, but that's what I did. And we limited words to 5 letters.
I think I was aiming for a "dog/pig/cat/sat" game of Scrabble. This
does not require much on my part, as dog/cat/sat is normally what I can
come up with. DH, however, commonly comes up with words like "vaunt" .
. . Which led to a discussion of how we want to do the whole game
thing. Like, it's not fun for DH if he has to hold himself back. It's
not fun for me to lose, or see our child frustrated and sad because
he's losing.

As a child, my father always let me win . . . and I felt like I was too
useless to win something on my own. OTOH, my mom never held back at
all, and I felt like I'd never be smart enough to challenge her. And
so very quickly I never wanted to play any games with my parents. So I
want a middle ground. But DH is concerned that we *tell* Steven "do
your best" but when it comes down to it, we hold back so that he
doesn't lose by a huge margin. I know very soon he will be winning on
his own, but in the meantime I am very afraid of screwing this up.

And I know a lot of this stems from my own issues-- I feel stupid a
lot, and get discouraged if I lose all the time. And DH is very smart,
this stuff is easy for him . . .

I don't know. This making sense to anyone? Maybe Scrabble is just a
bad game?

Thanks,
Melanie


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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Barbara Chase

My dd was interested in learning how to play chess a few months ago. She
had seen some kids playing with a large, life-like chess set when we were
in Seattle, and wanted to play too. I did some research and found several
places suggest that when the child is getting frustrated you exchange
sides. This way the adult never needs to hold back, you don't need to let
the child win, and often the child will see how to turn a bad situation
into a winning one by watching the adult begin to win with what appeared to
be the losing side. At any time the child can switch sides, so technically
they could win every game by switching just before the checkmate. However,
I believe this is like assuming that a child will be lazy and do nothing if
we don't teach them. From what I read, kids enjoy learning to play chess
this way, they stick with the game, and they don't need to win all of the
time.

Another strategy that I read about is to play complicated games in steps so
they aren't so overwhelming. For example, with chess you first play with
only the pawns, then when that game gets easy to add the knight, then keep
adding pieces until you are playing with them all.

I think both of these strategies could be applied to most games, to make it
fun for the adults and not so frustrating for the kids. I don't know if it
would work with scrabble -- unless you were playing to keep score for the
adults and just playing for the fun of making up words with your son. My
dd came up with her own scrabble game where she invents words and we have
to pronounce them. The game never lasts long, but it's so much more fun
for her than the real scrabble game. Personally, I agree... I've never
been a scrabble fan.


ciao
--bc--

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

In a message dated 10/19/03 11:31:25 AM, barb@... writes:

<< I did some research and found several
places suggest that when the child is getting frustrated you exchange
sides. >>

That's a really good idea!!

There are some kid' chess sets with the moves drawn out on the base of each
piece. I thought that was a good idea for people like myself who forget
patterns and games rules easily.

We've traded card hands with kids sometimes if they were stuck and about to
get grumpy and thought their cards were just bad. That's been fun sometimes,
like if we're playing rummy and they trade a confusing mess for something with
some pairs or near-runs.

<< My
dd came up with her own scrabble game where she invents words and we have
to pronounce them. >>

Before Holly could spell, we would let her play the spelling version of Five
Crowns (I'm forgetting the name) and as long as she could pronounce her word,
we'd accept it.

We've done that with lots of kids and a game called Picture Picture, where
you have to write down words. If they just put it on the right beginning letter
(it's an alphabet-based thing) and could remember what they meant to name,
we'd let it count. Oh--Even if the letter was wrong. If they thought "c"
instead of "k" or "e" instead of "i" or "a" we'd still count it as their c or e
word.

Sandra

Sandra

Tia Leschke

>When we play games with my son who is 4, we let him win 2 out of 3
>games. I try to set it up so it isn't too obvious that I'm letting him
>win in the games that he does win. I let him lose every third game or so
>so he knows what losing is like and gets used to it. Mostly we try to
>play games cooperatively if we can, with no winner or loser. Scrabble
>seems like it could be done that way. Hope this helps.

I've never liked board games much, though I do like Scrabble. When we've
played games that required reading or spelling before Lars could read, we
let him play with one of us as a team against the other parent.
Tia

[email protected]

On Sun, 19 Oct 2003 12:05:31 -0400 "M. Dalrymple-Lepore"
<si1verkitten@...> writes:
>
> As a child, my father always let me win . . . and I felt like I was too

> useless to win something on my own.

My brother and I used to pay chess with my grandmpa when we were little.
We won quite a bit. I still remember the day when I was watching them
play and saw my brother going in for the checkmate, and I opened my mouth
to say something to my grandpa (bad sportmanship, I know, but I was
little and didn't think about that) and he looked up at me and winked,
and it was clear he say my brother's plan and had decided to let him do
it, to let him know. I felt really betrayed, like he'd been lying to us
for years. Eventually my brother figured it out, too, and felt the same
way - we never really knew if we were good at chess or not, because he
always let us win. So I never did that with Rain.

What I did do, and still do sometimes, is handicap myself in certain
ways, and also offer her help at various times. Now she's not as
competitive, we play tons of games but really just for fun, but at 5 and
6 and 7 losing was hard...

We still haven't tried Scrabble - now it would probably work, but it's a
long game and harder to adapt to various levels. We do have a game called
Tuf-abet, which is out of print but available pretty cheap on ebay, and
it's got the same wort of interlocking letters to make words ideas, but
since each player has their own letters you can adapt it pretty easily.
Right now, all Rain needs is to be able to check with me on word spelling
sometimes, but with a younger kid you could do lots of things - give him
more time, let him flip the letter cubes to find the letters he wants,
etc. We did play Boggle when Rain was younger, although not 5, and she
would get more time and was allowed to make words with any number of
letters, whereas mine had to have at least 5 and there were no bonus
points for longer words until you hit 10 or so letters.... I love word
games..

Rain was usually okay with these sorts of changes - I did tell her I'd
been reading and writing for a lot longer than she had, and it helped
with these games. In golf, some players get a handicap, too. With some
games (Set, Frog Juice, Rat-a-Tat-Cat, Midnight Party, Slamwich) a 5 yr
old can be just as good as an adult, or better, and I think it's good to
play games like that sometimes, too.

It sounds like this is about you, too - maybe you could get a handicap
when you play certain games with DH? It would probably make the idea more
palatable to your son, and if your husband is really good at word games
and your not, it might level the playing field too... and maybe you need
to find some things your good at, too - maybe word games just aren't your
thing, but there are lots of other kinds of games...

Dar

averyschmidt

> Yes, I can spell, and yes I know a lot of words, but I use them in
the real
> ways they were intended, not in the artificial Scrabble-world. So
for one
> thing, Scrabble doesn't teach spelling. It rewards a very strange
and otherwise
> useless skill--take some random letters and see if you can shuffle
them in your
> head until you see a pattern. Or KNOW the patterns and see what
you can
> make.

This is so interesting to me, because my husband and I played
Scrabble the other night with friends of ours who love the game. I,
myself, hadn't played it in years and had forgotten how much fun it
was.
One aspect of it that I never realized before this recent game is
that you can totally bluff by misspelling a word, or even completely
inventing one. Other people have the option to challenge you on it
and then look it up in the dictionary. If it's an actual word and
it is in fact spelled correctly the challenger loses a turn, and if
the challenger was correct, and the word is misspelled or non-
existant, then the bluffer loses a turn.
So it turns out that you can do well at Scrabble without having an
extensive vocabulary (and good spelling skills) at all so long as
you're good at bluffing.
As far as rewarding strange and otherwise useless skills- I don't
see a problem with that so long as the players are enjoying the game
and having a good time all around. It seems to me the same could be
said for just about any board game.
Another "word" game that's really about patterns is Boggle.
It's a much faster game (and I think a more fun one) than Scrabble.
My husband and I love Set but our children aren't drawn to it at all.
They *love* Yahtzee though!

Patti

[email protected]

On Sun, 19 Oct 2003 12:33:14 EDT SandraDodd@... writes:
> So
> for one
> thing, Scrabble doesn't teach spelling. It rewards a very strange
> and otherwise
> useless skill--take some random letters and see if you can shuffle
> them in your
> head until you see a pattern. Or KNOW the patterns and see what you
> can
> make.

I don't think games teach, but kids can learn spelling while playing
Scrabble. Rain is learning to spell more words with Tuf-abet, which is
the same idea - shuffling random letters around and making them into
words. Generally she'll see that she has a good number of letters that
she thinks will make a certain word, and then ask how to spell it.
Sometimes I throw in a spelling/game tip, like the q almost always having
a u after it so if I have a q I stick the u on right away. I did notice
that she spelled "quiet" during one game (after asking me how it's
spelled) and then spelled it correctly a few days later when writing
something...

Dar

Julie

Just my two cents on Scrabble...

I love playing it because I love words, but I don't really care about winning. When I was a kid, my dad and I played "open scrabble." We'd follow all the same rules, but we'd put our tiles out in the open and help each other make words. This was a lot more fun for me, and if my dad wanted to spell "vaunt" while I spelled "cat," there was no problem because there were no points. Also, it wasn't as boring for me to wait for him to take his turn, because we'd discuss options together. My mom and sister never liked to play this way, but my dad and I loved it, so maybe it depends on your personality.

To this day, I'd rather play open Scrabble, but I'm happy to play for points, too.

Julie
----- Original Message -----
From: SandraDodd@...
To: [email protected]
Sent: Sunday, October 19, 2003 12:33 PM
Subject: Re: [AlwaysLearning] Scrabble w/ 5 yr old



In a message dated 10/19/03 10:05:24 AM, si1verkitten@... writes:

<< Maybe Scrabble is just a
bad game? >>

I think Scrabble is a bad game in general. <g>

My whole life people have said because I was "good with words" I should be
good at Scrabble, but Scrabble is about math and spatial stuff I don't have.
It's about being able to rearrange things in your head and read them. What's
about my speed is the medium-level Spell or Starve on Neopets.

Yes, I can spell, and yes I know a lot of words, but I use them in the real
ways they were intended, not in the artificial Scrabble-world. So for one
thing, Scrabble doesn't teach spelling. It rewards a very strange and otherwise
useless skill--take some random letters and see if you can shuffle them in your
head until you see a pattern. Or KNOW the patterns and see what you can
make.

You know what my kids liked MUCH better and seems similar as far as the
surface of what skill is being learned? Hangman. We have computer hangman, the
Ken Winograd game which you can download. It's $15 or $10 but VERY much worth
it in our lives thusfar. We had it on the oldest Mac and we have it on the
new one. That can be played cooperatively or a child can play it on his own.
There are definite liklihoods. R is more likely than G, just in general, in
English. But if you get a G at the end of a word it's worth guessing "n" or
"i" to see if it's an "ing" ending. Kids will start to pick stuff up like that,
and if they're Scrabble-minded it will help with that eventually.

When my kids were little we had Ravensburger kids' games. They're way better
than the lame Candy Land kind of American stuff. We got some of them from
Discovery Toys and others from hoity toy stores. One of their favorites, still
played in the past few months by Holly and her friends, is "Eureka," about
gold miners, and there's a little train as the "timer." Sometimes you roll the
train and it moves one space (it's a hex-grid board) and when the train gets to
town, you all count your gold.

That game involves dice, but no numbers past five, and no reading.

Others we played which didn't involve reading were the "first games" (where
the dice were shapes or colors, not even numbers), Ghost Party/Midnight Party
(has been published twice with different names), The Squirrel game (harder to
do because the pieces are more fragile), and there are some other newer
Ravensburger kids' games since my kids got older. They're German, and people living
in Europe can get them more easily.

OH!!! Labyrinth. That's GOOD.

A game collecting friend of mine has one (I think by that same company) that
involves trees (cardboard standup evergreens that go to the ground) and a
candle. The candle moves, and you're elves or pixies or something and you can
only move in the shadow. So there are literal shadowed spaces and light spaces,
which change when the candle is moved.

Doing something which is totally beyond a child's abilities will just
frustrate everyone involved.

I recommend the games Set (which kids can be really good at but adults can be
confused by) and Five Crowns, both by the same company. Both card games, but
one is laying down cards and finding relationships, and the other is kind of
like rummy and gin, but not exactly. Better.

Sandra

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Betsy

**Which led to a discussion of how we want to do the whole game
thing. Like, it's not fun for DH if he has to hold himself back. It's
not fun for me to lose, or see our child frustrated and sad because
he's losing.**

Sometimes we play teams, with father and son collaborating. Sometimes
we play for the pleasure of making words and we don't keep score. (We
play Quiddler, instead of Scrabble, but it's similar.)

Modifying the rules and letting your son draw more tiles or use wild
card tiles is also a possibility.

**I think Scrabble is a bad game in general. <g>**

I find the waiting for other people's turns utterly tiresome, because of
how long they spend thinking. When we play Quiddler I try to make it a
game where everyone works on their words simultaneously, even though one
is supposed to wait for the prior player to discard.

Hangman is very popular here as well. I think it's the gruesome outcome
that my son enjoys. And Wheel of Fortune was fun when he was first
learning to read.

**I recommend the games Set (which kids can be really good at but adults
can be
confused by) and Five Crowns, both by the same company.**

Five Crowns didn't catch on at my house, but Wizard, by the same
company, was a big favorite for quite a long time.

Betsy

Betsy

Julie Solich

>>I love playing it because I love words, but I don't really care about winning. When I was a kid, my dad and I played "open scrabble." We'd follow all the same rules, but we'd put our tiles out in the open and help each other make words.>>

My grandmother and aunts have been BIG scrabble players so it's a game I've played a lot. We also play what we call Take 2. Each player takes 7 tiles and has to form them into words, with all the words connecting just like on a scrabble board. When you finish you say "take 2" and everyone has to take 2 more tiles. and so on until the game is over. First person done, wins.

It's a very quick game and I wouldn't recommend it for young kids unless they were teamed with someone as they would probably get really frustrated with it. (You often have to pull all your words apart and start over).
Julie, who has just remembered that my husband promised to play scrabble with me if I learned to play chess. Have to remind him!!







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[email protected]

We're a big gaming family. Love games of all kinds, own more commercial games
than I want to count, make up our own, always looking for new games.

I think that adults "cheating" by losing on purpose is a bad idea. The kids
ALWAYS figure it out eventually, at which point they lose trust in and respect
for the adults. It also puts even more emphasis on winning and losing than I
like to have. And it quickly becomes horribly boring for the adults. On the
other hand, I think that adults insisting on smashing kids by "playing by the
official rules" on games where the adults have a clear advantage because of
experience, just sucks.

Games should be fun for everyone playing. If they're not, play a different
game or change the rules. We quite often manipulate the rules of games to create
a situation where our kids can play on a level playing field with the adults.
For us that means tinkering so that the kids are able to win without the
adults holding back, somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of the time. When the kids get
older and more skilled so that the handicapping results in them consistently
winning around 3/4 of the time we readjust.

For instance, we've been playing Scattergories the last few days. (commercial
version of that word game where you try to come up with words starting with a
certain letter in a dozen different categories - you only get score for words
you come up with that no one else does). The 11 year olds get double points
for their scores, to account for the adults greater breadth of knowledge and
vocabulary.

I love SCRABBLE, but I've never tried to play it competitively with a five
year old, I haven't had a five year old that would be able to play it on any
level and enjoy it. (We have played it together as a team just trying to fill the
board and use the letters.) If I were to try it competitively, it would
require a lot of handicapping. Perhaps the skilled adult would be required to make
words at least five letters long, and the kid would get double scores for his
words (if he's playing without help). Maybe the kid would be allowed to add
letters in more than one place per turn, as well. More likely, I'd pull out an
extra set of Scrabble letters for the kid and me to play a word game on the
side while I play his dad at Scrabble. Or I'd play as a team with the kid, but
only if I could figure out how to make him a real partner.

With really young kids (6 and under) we rarely played things where the adults
had a significant advantage because of experience. We have two stacking
balancing games - Chairs and Stackrobats, that the kids have ALWAYS been much
better at than me. When we first started playing them I had a handicap of two
pieces to each of theirs but that quickly went away. These days I'm considering
asking for a handicap that lets ME win more often! <g> Set and Bazaar are pattern
recognition based, our kids could play and win unhandicapped at 7 or so (and
they consistently beat their grandmother). Kids can play Yahtzee fairly young
if adults help add (and occasionally offer strategy hints.)

Deborah in IL



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Nancy Wooton

on 10/19/03 10:53 PM, dacunefare@... at dacunefare@... wrote:

> We're a big gaming family. Love games of all kinds, own more commercial games
> than I want to count, make up our own, always looking for new games.

I learned to *hate* games as the youngest kid, with siblings 10 and 5 years
older. They were brutal. I couldn't get them to play anything I could
actually play, but my brother loved "52 Pick-Up." Butthead.
>
> I think that adults "cheating" by losing on purpose is a bad idea.

With my own little kids, I played games of chance, ones that depended on a
throw of the dice or a spinner, rather than skill. We liked Mousetrap,
Candyland, that kind of thing. Dh's family were board-game crazy, so most of
the interest in them comes from him. As our kids got bigger, we started
playing his beat-up Masterpiece and Clue games, eventually getting a
Simpson's Clue to entice mom <g> to play. I still haven't won. I will not
play Monopoly -- they'll have to get a Star Trek version first ;-)

> The kids
> ALWAYS figure it out eventually, at which point they lose trust in and respect
> for the adults. It also puts even more emphasis on winning and losing than I
> like to have. And it quickly becomes horribly boring for the adults. On the
> other hand, I think that adults insisting on smashing kids by "playing by the
> official rules" on games where the adults have a clear advantage because of
> experience, just sucks.

(Adults or mean big brothers!) I used to get a migraine everytime my dad
tried to teach me chess.
>
> Games should be fun for everyone playing. If they're not, play a different
> game or change the rules. We quite often manipulate the rules of games to
> create
> a situation where our kids can play on a level playing field with the adults.
> For us that means tinkering so that the kids are able to win without the
> adults holding back, somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of the time. When the kids
> get
> older and more skilled so that the handicapping results in them consistently
> winning around 3/4 of the time we readjust.

We have a couple of geography games that have different levels built in;
adults be restricted to the most difficult questions.
>
> For instance, we've been playing Scattergories the last few days. (commercial
> version of that word game where you try to come up with words starting with a
> certain letter in a dozen different categories - you only get score for words
> you come up with that no one else does). The 11 year olds get double points
> for their scores, to account for the adults greater breadth of knowledge and
> vocabulary.
>
> I love SCRABBLE, but I've never tried to play it competitively with a five
> year old, I haven't had a five year old that would be able to play it on any
> level and enjoy it. (We have played it together as a team just trying to fill
> the
> board and use the letters.) If I were to try it competitively, it would
> require a lot of handicapping. Perhaps the skilled adult would be required to
> make
> words at least five letters long, and the kid would get double scores for his
> words (if he's playing without help). Maybe the kid would be allowed to add
> letters in more than one place per turn, as well. More likely, I'd pull out an
> extra set of Scrabble letters for the kid and me to play a word game on the
> side while I play his dad at Scrabble. Or I'd play as a team with the kid, but
> only if I could figure out how to make him a real partner.
>
I love Scrabble, but I only play hard with the computer. If the kids want
to play, we don't keep score and I'll help them. I get a bigger kick out of
finding unusual words than from scoring high, although finding a 7- or
8-letter word is very exciting, score-keeping or no.

> With really young kids (6 and under) we rarely played things where the adults
> had a significant advantage because of experience. We have two stacking
> balancing games - Chairs and Stackrobats, that the kids have ALWAYS been much
> better at than me. When we first started playing them I had a handicap of two
> pieces to each of theirs but that quickly went away. These days I'm
> considering
> asking for a handicap that lets ME win more often! <g> Set and Bazaar are
> pattern
> recognition based, our kids could play and win unhandicapped at 7 or so (and
> they consistently beat their grandmother). Kids can play Yahtzee fairly young
> if adults help add (and occasionally offer strategy hints.)
>

13-y.o. Alex, the one who thinks he sucks at math, KILLS at Set. I wonder
if Set is a right-brain activity.

Nancy

--
Our language is a rich verbal tapestry woven together from the tongues of
the Greeks, the Latins, the Angles, the Klaxtons, the Celtics, the 76'ers
and many other people, all of whom had severe drinking problems.
-- Dave Barry

[email protected]

On 19 Oct 2003 at 12:05, M. Dalrymple-Lepore wrote:

> And I know a lot of this stems from my own issues-- I feel stupid a
> lot, and get discouraged if I lose all the time. And DH is very
> smart, this stuff is easy for him . . .

Gee, this reminds me of playing games with my mom. She would never *let* us win. She
let us pick the games and made sure there were lots of *non skill* games. Candyland
and Shoots and Laders were always my favorite. I had a chance to win.

To this day I prefer games with an element of chance.

Lydia, mom to Lyndsey the energizer toddler