We love to play board games, card games, and dice games and when we head on vacation we ALWAYS have a bag filled with them as it is one of our favorite ways to stay connected on vacation.
We have learned that we need to make a few modifications along the way with games based on the age of our children and I will give you some of the tips we use for playing some of these games, but having games to play provide us lots of laughs, some friendly competition, and reigning champions that gloat the whole trip.
I will start with our favorite dice games as they seem to be some of the easier games to play with children as there isn't a ton that you have to figure out with them.
Tenzi-We noticed that this was one of the easiest games for our youngest to play as all she needed to be able to do was match the numbers on the dice racing to see who can get all 10 dice the same first. We always would let her start her first roll and determine which number she was going to go for based on the first roll and then we would all start rolling. This helped because it is hard for smaller hands to hold all 10 dice and be able to look and see what she had the most of. So that is an option for you and your family as well.
Flash-another fun game where you are going for Yahtzee type roles but the added fun of racing to get them first, flash dice which are the lucky count as anything, and then racing to grab the highest point tile to get higher points. This is a fast paced game with some skill as you need to be able to think and move quick.
Next is CARD GAMES
Ruckus-this game is so much fun for all ages and even the younger ones can play. It is basically a matching game (like go fish) with the funniest drawings on them but the added bonus of being able to steal others matches. We have had so much fun playing this game over the years and it can get a little crazy with everyone yelling out silly names like "macho man" while grabbing the other players cards. Definitely one to try out if you haven't already.
Spot it-This is such a fun game for all ages. Each card has a lot of designs on them and every single card has a matching design (I can't imagine how they did that), but the goal is to try to get rid of your cards before everyone else does. When our daughter was younger, we would give her less cards than us, but never let her know this or she would have gotten upset with us.
Some of my children let you also know what there favorite things we do in the summer.
Hi, I'd like to welcome you to raising healthy humans. I am your host Courtney, a personal trainer and health coach, and the founder of formfit. a community where I help busy moms move more. As a busy and sometimes overwhelmed mom of three myself, I understand that it can be difficult to find ways to live and raise Healthy Families. It is my goal to help provide you with the information and tactics you need to help raise healthy humans. Episode 10 summer fun. Although summer can be a little hectic with children being home from school, it also is a great time for you to be able to find ways to connect with your children through either vacation or fun family outings, and just possibly having a little bit more downtime. Today, I was just going to provide you with some ideas for your family, whether it be family game night, or some fun games my children have had over the years that they enjoy playing, and even one thing that we do as a family each year where there's an opportunity for our kids to continue to learn and enjoy some fun experiences. So whether you are going on a vacation this summer, or staying close to home, I wanted to provide you with a few fun games that we have that we play as a family game night. We usually try to do this once a week. And we have found some really fun games to play. So the first one is a dice game. And I tried to keep everything pretty much to where they are fun games for your children no matter the age. So the first one is Tenzin, and it is a dice game. And each person gets 10 dice. And what you are trying to do is you're trying to roll the dice and try to get you know the same number. So each person rolls the dice once. And this is a game where you're trying to be as quick as possible. So like you start the timer, and everybody rolls their dice. And then you know, you take whatever you have the most of and then you just keep rolling until you get all the dice the same number. So that's always a fun one, there's not much thought process with it, even your younger ones can play. And I'll give you a tip as to what we did when my daughter was younger, because her hands may not be able to hold all the dice. So what we would do is she would have the opportunity to roll her dice. The other thing is it's difficult for them to look at the dice and figure out which one which number is the most common. So we would then let her pick out what the common number was. So maybe she had more sixes than anything else. She pulled all the sixes out. And when she grabbed them up again, and through them, that's when we all began. So there's fun ways that you can make it to where it's a little bit more fair for your younger ones. But it's a fun one because like I said, all ages can play it. It doesn't take a lot of thought process for it. And it's just it's it's luck. It's complete luck. And you're just rolling the dice to see who can get there first. Now we all know Yahtzee. And that's a great one as well. But there's another one called flash, which is real similar to Yahtzee. But in addition to having to be able to figure out your yatse type dice your three of a kind your four of a kind. This one is where you are racing to do it, which is a lot of fun, because you've got that racing element. This is definitely one for older children, but my 10 year old she can play it. So you know, you'll just have to be able to determine based on you know your child and how they're able to process information in front of them as to whether or not they'll be able to play this. So it's again, just like yatse but there's the race element to it. Moving on to card games. One of our favorite ones that we play which is great for all ages is called spot it and this is where each card has a design on it that matches every single card. So everybody gets a pile of cards, equal amount of cards, and then one card is turned over into the middle and everybody's looking on their card for the match. Ching symbol or whatever the matching picture that's on that main card, and you're just trying to get rid of all of your cards in the quickest amount of time. So that is a one that we like to play, it's a lot of fun, it's for all ages, the only thing that we did is when my daughter was younger, here, she's gonna know that what we used to do is we used to pass out two cards to the rest of us. And she would get one card so that it felt even she didn't recognize the fact that our piles were a little bit bigger than hers. But, you know, she felt like we weren't helping her in any way. And it was more fair to where she was close to getting all of her cards finished at the same time as the rest of us. ruckus is another fun one, this is similar to go fish, basically, you have cards with pictures on them, and you're trying to match the pictures. And they have funny macho man with a picture of a really strong guy, then there's ice cream. And there's pictures of like an ice cream cone with eyes. So they're fun little pictures for kids. They're trying to match them. But at the same time, it's a fast moving game to where you're basically just picking up cards until you find the match. But then you can also steal other people's matches, so that if I had macho man, and someone else had placed a pair of macho man down on their side, I could grab their macho man bring it to my side. So it's a lot of fun. A lot of people are grabbing and pulling from different people. And again, we seem to tend to go to these fast paced games. But that's another fast one. And a lot of fun and pretty easy for the kids to be able to do because it's just matching cards. Some of my children's favorite card games are uno, skip Bo, where you're trying to go up to 12 and get rid of cards, and then RACO. And that's another one where you've got so many cards in a little holder, and you're trying to get them in order from one to 60. So those are some fun card games that we play. My daughter also loves chameleon. So this is more of a game where one person is the chameleon. And the other people receive cards that kind of tell them what the topic is going to be. And the chameleon is trying to figure out what they're all describing, and the people that are describing it or trying to figure out who the chameleon is. It's a fun game, it's definitely more advanced, not for the younger group. But it is a fun game as well. If you are interested in finding out more board games and card games, I will provide you with a link to a blog post of mine where I kind of go through the different games that we enjoy playing, so that you can see some of the games that we like, and there'll be links so that you can look at them further. But they're lots of fun. That's one thing that we love to do is have a family game night. And honestly, when we go on vacation, we have a group of games that we always take with us. And we like decide who the reigning champion is. And it's like every night we're playing the game, the three or four games to figure out who is moving on in the reigning championship. So we love family game nights, they are a lot of fun in our house. The other thing that we love to do is more of an activity that the children do in the summertime to make sure that they're still learning and that is our continent studies. So I have Kinsley here, and she's going to talk about what she is doing for the summer continent learning and we try to make it fun. But still, it's an opportunity to get some educational learning in about other countries during this time. And we started this last year during COVID because of the extended summer and I just figured that because of their learning at the end of the school year, I just felt like they needed to continue to do something where they were learning different information. And this is kind of what we all decided that we were going to do that would be fun, and something that they would be enjoying during their summer break. So Kinsley, do you want to tell us basically what you all do for the learning? So we each choose a place and a continent. And then we make a PowerPoint it on like its culture, and then we present it like the end of the week, and we make a dish from that place. Okay. So what we did last year was each week, we studied a different continent. And I don't think we I think it ended up being like every week and a half to two weeks based on dead schedule, right? So every two weeks, they had a different continent. And they each chose a country within that continent, right? And then you would do a PowerPoint. So you were getting your technology in. And then you were learning about what different things were you'd learning about? I know you said culture, but can you be more specific? Do you remember their language, the food that they eat the government celebrations? And weren't there some like interesting facts that you found interesting facts? Okay, so you each studied, and then at the end of it, we would do a presentation night, where each of them would present their PowerPoint, and they each made a dish. So each two weeks, they kind of rotated one person made the appetizer, another person made the dinner, and then the third person made the dessert, and we would have a whole meal based on that continent. Right? And do you remember any of the ones that you did last year? I remember that I did Madagascar for Africa. And I did France for Europe. And we did Asia, right? Japan, Japan. And what was your favorite thing about doing this? My favorite thing was learning the language because when you present it, you say it in that language. So it was fun to learn. So saying different words. Told us different words that you had learned. That was your favorite part of it. Yeah. And do you feel like you learned anything? Or do you remember anything from your brothers know? Any of the food? Do you remember any of the food that you ate? I was our favorite. One of the favorite meals that we continue to have would be those like a beef stew thing that Grady made for a think Africa. Yep, Nigerian beef stew. A lot. We like that. Okay, anything else you want to say? No. Okay, thank you. Kinsley. Goodbye. Okay, so now I have my oldest Mason with me. And he's going to talk about his favorite thing that we do usually in the summertime tell us you can tell us a couple of things that we do. Okay, I like going outside and doing things outside, like playing in the pool, or we sometimes use water balloons. And we have like, competitions will play sometimes water balloon tag, which is we just run around and we have three water balloons. We try to hit people, our family members with them. And if you get hit, you're out and the winner there's a winner whoever's last standing and it gets very competitive, doesn't it? Yeah. Especially with dad me and probably mom you is what were the most competition is Kinsley and Grady are pretty, you know, easy to get out. Well and we usually do this or we have done this where it's kind of hide and seek like in the beginning, right? I we did it? Yeah. I think of it like you know you hide whenever you feel like early, you know, you can run around. I think we have like what we did was love first 10 seconds. You're not allowed to throw water balloons because we're all trying to get out of the porch area. So you could go hide, but I think like some pee, I think Kinsley would like hide almost the whole game. And just anytime somebody walked by she tried to hit them usually fail. But yeah, there was a hiding aspect. But it was like, hide and seek tag, I guess, with water balloons. That was a lot of fun. I enjoyed that. Because it dig outside activity and doing things with the family. That was that's always fun. Excellent. Anything else you want to mention? No, not necessarily. Thank you Welcome. And then my middle son, he did not want to talk but my daughter Kinsley is going to share what his favorite thing to do in the summertime is. So his favorite thing to do in the summer is to play ping pong on the ping pong table that we got for Christmas and do ping pong challenges against the family. So again, another competitive thing that we do, and we'll usually start either one or two. Players competing against one another and winner plays against the team that was standing out or the person that was standing out until they can what lose or win every game, and then they're designated the winner, right? Yep. Yep, that's pretty easy. So those are a few things that we do as a family in the summertime. And hopefully it provides you with some ideas for your family to help get you all out moving and playing games spending time with one another. Because remember, the more we can play together and be together as a family, the healthier we will be in our relationships because we're spending time together in our bodies because a lot of the games include movement, and in our mind, my daughter's pointing to her mind. So wishing you all the best and I will see you again next week.