Games for the holidays

Today as I searched for a topic to write about. I decided that games was where I was spending most of my free time over the holidays and thought you might be also. Then I searched my previous articles and found that four years ago, I had written about games as well so I have repeated some of the information from that article.

Holidays have been special family times for us, often we spent more time playing games than watching TV. You have to admit that it’s much easier to talk during a game than it is during a TV show, and that has to be a bonus for everyone.

This Christmas season we have spent most of our game time on croquet or Chinese checkers. A nice combination of inside/outside, don't you think?

Three dimensional Tic Tac Toe
One uncle, Harold, was a mathematical thinking man. He taught us to draw 3 Tic Tac Toe grids in a line and then to imagine them stacked on top of each other. There's a 4 square grid shown on the Monash site listed below. It's lots of fun and very challenging.

Logic Puzzles
Another uncle, Frank, made the most wonderful wooden puzzles. My favourite was “Who owns the elephant” where I had to follow clues to find a house colour, pet, street number, favourite food, etc for each of five friends. This was special as he used lots of names of my pets, friends, house numbers and favourite foods and it took about 6 months to solve it. Perhaps you could spend some time creating some special family games (and memories!).

I have seen other versions of this puzzle on a number of websites, including the mathsisfun site. It is said that Einstein created it and that 98% or people can't solve it. However, it is a logic puzzle, so it can be solved if you know the rules. Using an grid (similar to the one found at the DavidPace site) can be useful.
Other Puzzles
An easy one to make might be a jigsaw puzzle out of an enlarged family photo printed on cardboard. You could even do the daily zigsaw on the net at the zigsawzone site This allows you to to compete against yourself for time. It took me 16 minutes, and you probably can be much faster. At least all the pieces are rightside up and facing the correct direction.

Car games
Eye Spy was a favourite of my children in the car, but here are a couple of other ideas.

The momsminivan website has some very good ideas for games to play in the car. One is a 4 x 4 grid (16 squares) each with a picture of something you might see while travelling in a car (a red car, school bus, police car, 50 speed zone sign, etc). When you have 4 in a row (across, down or diagonal), you win.
Scavenger Hunt was also suggested by the momsminivan site. Give each child a list of items to watch for while driving. The list can be made up ahead of time and adjusted for the roads you are taking. The site suggests a sample list of items to hunt for!

Board games
My favourite board game as a child was Candyland, then it became Monopoly, and later Risk. Our son, Peter, used to enjoy Stratego with his good friend, James. Monopoly was also Bec’s favourite. This game has entertained generations since it was created in 1934. and is still one of the most popular games.
However Chinese checkers is the flavour of the year with us. My grandparents used to have a game every evening and then set it up again for the next night and placed the board under the sofa.

Poetry
Although, not a game, billboard poetry was suggested as a good activity by the familyfun site. Take turns picking out four words from road signs. Give the words to the other players who have 1 minute to turn the words into a four-line, rhyming poem using one word per line.

Lots more
I’m sure some of you also have some great ideas. I’d love to hear them if you have time to leave a comment. Anyway, enjoy the rest of summer.

Places to visit
http://www.mathsisfun.com/logicpuzzle.html
http://www.davidpace.com/all-else/other-items/einstein-logic-puzzle.htm
http://www.jigzone.com/puzzles/daily-jigsaw
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~andyb/NC3D/nc3d.html
http://www.momsminivan.com/