Blogmas | Games for the Holidays!

Hello!

I don’t know about you, but my family has never been into games.

The one thing I wished my family did more of was play games. We had a couple of years where we did in fact play Just Dance and Taboo, but they didn’t end quite well, which is probably why we never kept at it afterwards!

Now that I have Nolan and Kimber, I would like to bring in some old school games that I certainly enjoyed as a child. Nolan is very infatuated with technology and understands what a PlayStation and XBOX are–thanks in part to his daddy! However, as I’ve found out recently, he has a knack for Hungry Hungry Hippoes, so I may be right in my thinking that introducing some of these games I will be talking about in this post, will be something he might enjoy too!

Unfortunately, Kimber isn’t old enough to actually play with us, but I’m hoping watching the two of us would give her something to look forward to in the future. So, here were some of the games that I thought could be really good contenders for the three of us and maybe possibly your family too to play during the holidays.

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Connect 4

Last September, while my sister was in the hospital, Nolan and I spent a good amount of time together and on Nickleodeon, they had some advertisements for the newest creation of the Connect 4 franchise; we were intrigued, Nolan especially, but I’ve always been more into the original setup, so I wasn’t too interested in this version.

I have many, many memories of playing this game in school. While I was in elementary, I took speech and every Friday we had a popcorn party, where we sat on the floor, ate popcorn, and played a different game (thus how this post came about!) each week. Connect 4 is a very easy game to understand as you have the structure itself and two different colored coins or chips, the objective is to not only block the other player, but you also have to connect four spots in a row in order to win.

Connect 4 is a lot like Bingo and Tic-Tac-Toe as you can go in many directions: diagonally, side to side, and up and down. As long as you win “fairly” then anyone at any age can be a master at the game itself.

Jenga

When I was in elementary school, I took Speech, and I would be in there for maybe 20-25 minutes a day and I specifically remember Fridays being the best day of the entire week because it was our party day. Our teacher was so sweet, and she would make popcorn for each class, and we’d play different games, but it was a ruse because we still had to do our lessons in between turns. She was a smart and sneaky like that! Anyways, I tried to rack my brain trying to figure out which ones we played, and I really hope that I can teach my nephew someday soon.

Jenga is very unique, it is made up of rectangle sticks and requires you to really think about the overall design, whenever it is your turn, you pick a stick from the very bottom of the build or a little higher. For most people, you rarely went from the bottom as you need good bones for everything to stay up and if you take one from that section and it turns out it was helping from breaking down the whole thing, you lose. My nephew has always enjoyed stacking things up and blocks in general, so toddlers would really love playing something like this because they’re always doing things with their toys.

Screamo

For this game, I learned it at the nursing home back in October. If these ladies ranging in age early 70’s to mid-80’s can play, anybody can do it. My nephew is four and he just loves playing this game anytime he comes over. It is usually the first thing he wants to do! What he doesn’t know is that he’s learning a bit of math too!

It is fairly simple once you figure out the steps. You have a paper with the numbers 1-12, two dice, and 12 chips or coins as my nephew prefers to call them. The main goal is to roll both of your dice and say it lands on a four and seven, this equals out to be seven but you’ve already covered up your seven with a previous play, so you have three options, that is if these other numbers are not already gone, you can lay down two coins on your four and three or exchange them with a five and two or six and one, which is even better because it is better to remove the number one as you can’t get a natural one with two dice.

UNO

I like a lot of card games, but my ultimate favorite–even if I’m not the best at it!–is UNO.

I have never been able to figure out how long I’ve loved UNO, but it had to come after middle school though. It doesn’t show up in my earlier memories and this kind of makes sense because I do remember playing an awful lot from 2005-2009 with my family and friends at slumber parties (do you remember those?!) and again, it is pretty easy to follow, but there are a few symbols that can be somewhat tricky, like the reverse and skip cards. These can be really annoying if you are playing with a large group of people and nobody really knows who is next in line, so to make things easier on yourself and the newcomers, I’d pick those guys out before you start the game entirely.

There is an episode of The Golden Girls where Dorothy is playing Gin Rummy with her mother Sophia, and she always loses the game and Sophia basically drives her completely insane after every round so she gives up and decides no more. By the end of the episode, you learn why Sophia chooses to play it with her daughter and they end up playing a round during the last few seconds of the show. I guess I’m the same way with UNO. I love playing it with my family the most, it’s where I have the most memories, and it doesn’t matter on the age because my nana was in her late 70’s when we taught her so it’s not all that difficult once you know what each card means while the game continues.

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In a way, I am like Sophia because I like the talk and watching everyone’s facial expressions as they arrange their cards and it’s one game that being an observer can have its advantages… As much as I’d like to win a round or two, I am fine with seeing someone get excited instead. This is what I hope to teach Nolan the most; it’s okay to allow someone to win but you never, ever tell them afterwards, because then they’ll think you forfeited the game and they’ll want a rematch and that attitude doesn’t make good challenges, especially if they lose against you.

What are your favorite games to play during the holidays? Which one do you hope to teach your child or family member someday?

A-Z Disability Challenge | K : Why Kids Should Be Educated About The Various Types Of Disabilities

When I was busy coming up with the letters and their themes, I was a little worried whether it would be a good idea to basically talk about children and how they view people with disabilities twice. After discussing it with my mom, she pretty much convinced me that it would be interesting to speak up on different ages, because as I’ve found out over the years, children under the ages of 5 are curious of their surroundings but they want to learn about everything! Kids in that are higher in age and in school may hang out with friends that can influence them to bully other kids. So, this is what we will be talking about on today’s post!

I remember when I was in grade school, we were all in separate classes for all of our subjects. The only time you basically got to see the other students was at lunch and recess. I knew at the time that there was one other kid with a disability, we never saw each other but only on the occasional field trips and grandparent’s programs. That was it! So, I was hardly ever around somebody that was remotely like me, until I had my surgeries in 2002.

The reason why I bring this up is because throughout my entire time in elementary school, I was basically taught to be like everyone else. I never really experienced any bullying although there was one girl who didn’t like me, but we were at least civil with each other. Anyways, I grew up actually hating to be around other kids with disabilities, because they acted differently than me and my friends–now of course, I feel horrible thinking that way but that was my mindset back then; I wasn’t like them but yet I was!

You can never really tell what a kid thinks about things unless they tell you, but when they don’t ask you questions, they will almost go through life not knowing the real answers. They will begin to seek them through their friends, and you hope that everything those kids have been taught are saying good things but unfortunately not all children are being told that having a disability of any kind can be a beautiful thing. Instead they are fearful by what they don’t understand and relying on that information to others.

I always wished that there were more motivational speakers that came to schools with a variety of disabilities. Unfortunately, I also worry if this were to happen, if they would appericate it because I know everytime we had people come in and talk with us, it would literally go in one ear and out in the other. However, there is that small chance that a few kids that enjoy learning about everything, so it could be a positive experience as well!

I think it would be useful for these youngsters to see a plethora of differences in their bodies, we are not going to look like athletes or supermodels, and it’s important to remember that at any age!

I had a thought the other night about this subject. For some reason, all of the speakers that came to talk to us were all adults. What if kids saw teenagers or someone in their early 20’s? If I saw more women and talking about her disability, I wonder if that would have made a difference because I didn’t learn how to love myself until two years after I graduated from high school altogether. It really sucks to know that not only .did I have to be away from my classmates and watch X-Men: First Class to feel like I can love being the way that I am!

When you were in school, how did you view the speakers that came to talk about the aftermath of drunk-driving or their disabilities? Do you think there should be more people talking about other topics that could be helpful to children as they continue to get older?

Damn Words!

I have a problem with words. Always have and probably always will have a problem with them. I have a learning disability. I’ve had it since I started Elemantary school. I never really liked reading back then because I felt stupid reading out loud because I stumble on my words a lot when I read out loud. Since I was a freshman though, I’ve liked reading. Since they didn’t really have you read out loud unless we were reading Shakespere then I felt bad because my stumbles went come back to haunt me. Thank god we didn’t do that much. I think we only did that twice that whole year. So it wasn’t that bad.

I’m not the best at spelling words either. In middle school, we had these books that we could write in and did our spelling tests in as well. I would fail pretty much all of them. Nowadays, I’m not as bad as I use to be. Simple and big words are my biggest enemy. I can’t say both words without saying it wrong and somebody correcting me everytime I say it wrong. It gets annoying for me. Big words hate me. I should keep a mini dictionary with me so I can always look up a word that somebody says that I don’t get. I could have used that for Creative Writing teacher. He would always use big words and I had to ask my aide what the word meant afterwards. Why do words got to be on my bad side?