Games in the classroom

As a reward for good behaviour, Biggie's teachers decided that the class would have a games day to celebrate the end of the term. Initially it was going to be all boardgames, all the time, but lots of the children wanted to bring their own games to school, so 'our' part of the day was cut back to two hours.

After much consideration, I cut the list of games to take back to around 17. Gregor had kindly offered to help out, and he brought a couple as well, although we found there was less time to talk than we had expected.

We started the day by talking about games - what makes a game a game? First response: "It's about having fun with your friends and spending time with them" - how can I top that?!

Next, we talked about rules for games. There was a lot of discussion about cheating and why that's not acceptable. I used as a basis the rules that Giles Pritchard has suggested - although I condensed them to a few major points:

• Board games are games; the idea of playing them is to have fun in good company.
• You must listen to the rules explainer.
• Cheating is admitting defeat and is completely unacceptable. If a person in a game you are playing is caught cheating the game should be ended immediately and a new game begun – with the promise that cheating will not occur.
• Always treat the game and the game pieces better than you would treat your own game. – After you have finished playing the game there should be no sign that you played it except for a pleasant memory.
• Setting up and cleaning up are a part of the game, you need to do your share.
• Be a good loser and an even better winner.

We summed them all up with the Knizia quote, which we put up on the board as a motto for the day:

“When playing a game the goal is to win,
but it is the goal that is important, not the winning”

I had planned for this to lead into a discussion of how games have designers just like books have authors, but the natives were getting a little restless so we jumped straight into theme, as a way to introduce the first batch of games.

I'd prepared a quick table of the games that I'd taken with a quick overview of each for me, Gregor and the teacher.

Here's what I had about the themed games:

Game	Number of Players	Notes
Incan Gold (Alan R Moon and Bruno Faidutti)	3-8	EXPLORERS! Explore a ruined temple and collect treasures – but if you go too far you might lose it all! 5 explorations = 1 game. Disasters only count the second time.
For Sale (Stefan Dorra)	3-6	GET RICH! Buy and sell property – the winner is the person with the most money at the end. Part 1: Auction properties (buy with money) Part 2: Sell properties (for cheques).
Hey that’s my fish (Günter Cornett & Alvydas Jakeliunas)	2-4	PENGUINS! The players are penguins, trying to catch as many fish as possible. Strategy is to isolate an area from the other players.
Fearsome Floors (Friedemann Friese)	2-7	MONSTER! Race game – players have 14 turns to escape from the monster. Part 1: Eliminated pieces are returned to the player. Ends when all but 2 tiles have been turned over Part 2: Eliminated pieces are eliminated forever.
Cartagena (Leo Colovini)	2-5	PIRATES! Play cards to move forward to the next empty square with a matching symbol Move backwards to an occupied square to collect 1 or 2 more cards.
Pick Picknic (Stefan Dorra)	2-6	CHICKENS! Players compete to get the most food – but are they a corn-eating chicken or a chicken-eating fox?
Pickomino (Reiner Knizia)	2-7	CHICKENS! But this time it’s worms that they want. Yahtzee-style dice game. Remember: You MUST have rolled a worm before you can pick up a tile. Fast rules: Turn over highest tile AND the tile that is returned.

and some others that I took out at that stage:

Game	Number of Players	Notes
Sherlock	2-6+	Memory game testing out-of-sequence memory
Apples to Apples Junior	4-10	All players have 5 red cards; take turns to be the judge (flip a green card). Best red card match gets the green card – winner is first to 4.
Ingenious (Reiner Knizia)	1-4	Match the pattern to place tiles & score in 6 different colours Only your LOWEST score counts! Use paper scoresheets instead of wooden cubes

The children separated into four groups.

• Gregor took a group of girls who were desperate to play For Sale. This was a huge hit with the kids - at the end of the session, they begged me to leave it so they could play it again.
• I took a group of girls and boys who were interested in Fearsome Floors. It was very popular but the kids found it a bit too complicated, especially when I had to move away for a little while
• The teacher sat down with a group of boys who were very interested in Apples to Apples. This was amazing - they played it for over an hour!
• Biggie sat on the floor to teach Pickomino - it seemed to go over very well, too, although I didn't hear any chicken noises from the group.

Meanwhile, one boy was roaming the classroom with Incan Gold in hand, not wanting to play anything else, and another girl was wandering around watching but not wanting to join in.

My Fearsome Floors group moved on to Sherlock and Otto, who had been playing Catch the Match quietly by herself, came to join in. She was pretty pleased to finish in second place in the group of five eight to ten year olds. Meanwhile Gregor had enticed the For Sale girls to play Incan Gold (by promising another game of For Sale later on in the day). Surprisingly, this wasn't much of a hit - they were too interested in getting back to For Sale to enjoy Incan Gold.

I'd prepared some journal pages for the students to reflect on the games they played in between new games. These were filled in with differing levels of detail and success, but with some great answers:

Game	Rating	What I Liked	Something I Learned	Next time I will
Apples to Apples	8	That it had a lot of risk	That you can do opposites	Have a lot of fun!
Make ‘n’ Break	10	It was VERY fun.	It was constructive	Have a lot of fun!
For Sale		It is really fun and I bought a lot of houses	Money!	Do better
Incan Gold		It was really fun	Take your chances	Get more jewels
Pickomino	7	The temptation!	It’s hard!	Play better (hopefully)
Incan Gold		The temptation	That it’s easy to lose	Play with more people and have more fun
Pickomino	10	The temptation and the worms	How lucky you can be!!	Not so much of risk taker
Apples to apples	4	It was funny	That you don’t need to be honest
Apples to Apples	10	It was funny	You don’t need to be honest	Be better
Polarity	6	It was a challenge		Be better
Dancing eggs	9.5	I liked how it was really hard and a challenge to do the actions. I WON!	Never think that anything’s easy	Do the exact same thing!
Finstere Flure	9 Excellent	It was so scary how the monster walked to try and eat you up!	X	Try to go first so I don’t get locked in! (by the other players’ pieces)
Sherlock	5 OK	How you had to use your memory	X	Try to remember much, much more
Fearsome Floors		There was a monster	You don’t always need a dice	Try to win
Sherlock		I WON!!!	You need a REALLY good memory	I’ll win AGAIN.
For Sale		It’s fun and I got to buy good houses	How to sell houses	Not spend too much money
Incan Gold		It was fun	Take your chance	Do something

We came back together as a group to discuss the games we'd played, and what skills we had been using.

• Memory (heh - I pointed out that Otto had come second)
  
• Deciding when to take a risk
• Spending your money
• Opposites (this from the Apples to Apples group, who had played some rounds looking for something that was unlike the faced card)
• Dividing up the treasures
  

To finish up, I took out some games that used a skill that we hadn't used yet: dexterity. We had two groups playing Tier auf Tier, one playing Make 'n' Break and one playing Dancing Eggs - and a copy of Polarity for everyone to try out.

Game	Rating	What I Liked	Something I Learned	Next time I will
Dancing Eggs	5	Dancing eggs was a really fun game
Animal on animal		Stacking animal	How to stacking animals	Try harder
Tier auf Tier		It’s easy	The rules	Try harder
Polarity	9	It was a huge challenge because if the slightest thing was out of place it would fall	I learnt about magnets and balance!	Try and get three!

Overall, the day was a huge success. The teacher liked games, the journal pages, and the way the kids were engaged. Best of all - they're all (teacher and students) keen to do it again :)

To sum up the session:

What I liked

• Having someone (Gregor) to help demo the games was invaluable.
• The game journal pages worked well and made a great record of the day (where they were used)
• Finishing with dexterity games was fantastic, although Dancing Eggs got a bit rowdy
  

Something I learned

• Games work best with supervision - especially if they have a mechanic the kids haven't seen before (eg Finstere Flure)
• It's difficult to involve some kids in the classroom activity, even if they are interested in the material
• Having games that use a range of different skills works well for the larger groups
  

Next time I will

• Try to take fewer games (I say this every time)
• Introduce the game journal pages at the start of the session rather than as games finish.
  

Where do the games fit in?

Biggie's teacher: So, Melissa, what is it that you actually DO?
Me: I'm a consultant in online services. I help companies improve their websites & web presence, and to manage them better.
Teacher: (Looks confused). So, where do the games fit in?


We've had this before, too, with comments like, "I didn't know you ran a book shop" (I don't, we just like to read).


I wonder whether it would be different if I coached a children's netball or hockey team three times a week. There doesn't seem to be an expectation that people are paid for their volunteer sporting activities - so it intrigues me that other recreational activities are automatically assumed to be money-making. I only wish they were! Who wouldn't prefer to play & talk about games all day?


This weekend, I'm playing and re-learning all the games that I want to take to Biggie's school on Friday, for her class's last-day-of-term games day. I'm trying to design some curriculum-related material around it, not so much for the kids (who will have fun anyway) but to demonstrate to the teacher how good a fit games can be in the classroom.

The other thing on the gaming agenda is restacking the game shelves. They are a bit like wardrobes: they're fine, they're fine, everything fits ... and then you buy ONE MORE ITEM and suddenly nothing fits anymore and you have piles of games lying around everywhere and nowhere to put them. (Or piles of clothes, in the case of the wardrobe). I think our games may have been spawning while we weren't looking - anyway, I think it's time to retire some stuff to the attic or maybe even to eBay. You know storage space is tight when you catch yourself eyeing the bedroom, thinking, "well if I turned the bed around, then I would have a WHOLE WALL that I could fill with bookshelves!"

And rearranging the bookshelves would let me set up my system for sorting the games properly, too.

School Games Night the second

As forewarned by Melissa last week, we held another Family Games Night at Daughter the Elder’s School on Friday. We had twenty-five adults and thirty-five children. This year in terms of adults explaining games there was just Melissa and myself as well as contributions from Daughter the Elder. You can read about last year’s session here.

This year we were scheduled from 4:30 pm until 7:30 pm, which was actually ended up being 8:30 pm. It was also designed to be a fund raiser via our friendly internet games shop in that the school will get 10% of any orders.


We took most of the games that we intended to take, although one or two have been eaten by our house. There were two specific requests, Settlers of Catan and Fish Eat Fish.

The parents and children who came brought some of their own games, which were all played.
Ticket to Ride - Märklin Edition
Chess
Fish East Fish
Monopoly
Trivial Pursuit - Junior
Popomatic Sorry or Ludo

These are the games we ended up bringing, including a couple of demo copies from our FIGS.
Ticket to Ride Always popular with the parents.
Von 0 auf 100
Perpetual Commotion
Make ‘n Break
Spooky Stairs sans expansion.
Cartagena
Marrakesh
M is for Mouse
Carcassonne
Apples to Apples Junior!
Halli Galli
Catch the Match
TransAmerica
Dancing Eggs
Incan Gold played as Diamant, i.e. without the artifacts
Gulo Gulo
Piggy Back
Sherlock
Pick Picknic
Fish Eat Fish
The Same Game

All the above were played, these were the lonely ones
Settlers of Catan
Finstere Flure
Gopher It!

There were some stand out popular games for the night.

I started a session of Von 0 auf 100 very early on and it was played most of the night, quite often with children teaching other children how to play. It’s a lovely little racing and bluffing game. Another Haba gem.

Make ‘n Break is always popular and rightly so, it is fun and easy to learn and play.

Spooky Stairs got a lot of table time too. The cute little ghost and magnet head meeples probably help, but it an excellent variation on a roll and move game.

Piggy Back is another excellent variation on a role and move game. With hitching ride on the back of other players and a balancing mechanism to reduce the chance of runaway lucky leaders.

Apples to Apples Junior! a good one for parents and children together. The Junior edition is good for primary school children and for people outside the US it also has the advantage of being more global.

Catch the Match is realistically just a pattern matching game, but it has been designed very well and captivates both adults and children without fail.

TransAmerica Ticket to Ride may not catch the attention of the children and these games nights, but TransAmerica does.

Dancing Eggs was played a lot at night, including occasionally in a very non-standard manner with eggs flying across the room!

Fish Eat Fish is too abstract for Melissa, that or her reaction to fish may be subconsciously put her off. I like this, but she doesn’t. It was being played most of the night. It required explanation, and got a few glazed looks during the explanation but after a few turns it would invariably click with the players and they became quite enthused (both parents and children).

I still think that the more helpers the merrier is the case for this sort of event. It is billed as a Family Games Night to get the children along. I suspect an alternate way of getting games into the homes might be to run a Parent’s Family Games night, where you can teach the parents various games without the distraction of marauding children. This has its logistical difficulties, including babysitting and just how many parents would come to such an event, but it is an idea bubbling around in the back of my mind to possibly try out one day.

This post is dedicated to the memory of the red Ticket to Ride train that was sucked up by a vacuum cleaner and the card from another game that was grabbed by the baby, it was bent back into shape, but I don’t think it will ever be quite the same. They gave their best in service to games.

Mmm meeples taste like …