My daughter loves to play verbal games. As much as she likes music and to sing at the top of her lungs, she likes also to interact with the people around her by coordinating a game. This typically starts with the statement, "let's play a game."
One of the first games she pioneered in our family was tic-tac-toe. She realized there was no need to have some be X's and the other person be O's when what you were doing was picturing ownership of cells on the 3x3 board. She also realized the playing area was the same as the numbers one through nine as ordered on a keypad. She would say, "I'll keep track, you tell me which location you want."
We'd call out numbers, picturing in our mind which spaces we each owned until someone won or there was a tie. Once we got used to the system, we could knock out a game of tic-tac-toe in less than half a minute.
My daughter loves word games the most I would venture to say. There have been many over time but her latest one is the easiest to play, can accommodate any number of players, has no winner or loser, doesn't involve keeping track of scores and is simple while also challenging at the same time. It's also a lot of fun.
The game is simple: pick a letter of the alphabet. On your turn, say a word that starts with that letter. Play passes in turn around the group. There are two restrictions: you can't repeat a word and the plural of a word is considered the same word. So, for instance, fish and fishing are two different words because one could be a noun while the other is a verb.
Typically everyone is trying to come up with something different and interesting. We played with the letter W earlier today. 'Wigwam' was followed by 'wig' and then the next person called out 'wiggle.' The fun is in trying to go as quickly as you can. We all get stuck though. There are an untold number of 'W' words including proper nouns like William and Walter and yet after a while, nothing is there, your brain is devoid of anything starting with 'W'. When this happens the group just waits while you struggle to come up with a word.
While this happens, someone will invariably exclaim, "oh, I've got a good one!" while your mind is a complete blank. During gameplay, it's common for the group to say, "nice one" when someone comes up with an uncommon word. The game continues until we arrive at our destination (we do this in the car a lot) or the group has had enough of that letter. It's a friendly game with people being willing to help each other out if they're stuck by giving them a word. We're getting good at this new game. Soon, we're planning on even tackling the letter Q.
The Big Boy Update: My son has been very into Star Wars after his recent Disney trip. He spent a few hours after school with my mother yesterday and when I got home I saw them sitting on the couch, my son's lightsaber in hand, and the very first released movie in the series, Star Wars—because back then, then no one called it Star Wars: A New Hope. He doesn't have screen time after school but he wanted to see if Mimi remembered the movie. I got sucked in when I got home, standing in the living room, unable to walk away.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter threw up yesterday when we got home play therapy with Dhruti. She vomited twice within an hour, all of which seemed to be her lunch school salad that was not digesting well. Today she was home all day ut agreed with me that she hadn't been sick, the food disagreed with her. Her complete lack of temperature and the fact that she felt back to normal once she had gotten the food out of her and we decided she was back to school tomorrow. She got to lounge around in pajamas all day though, which was fun.
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