Storms and board games

Lotta nearly blown away by the wind

The last few days, storm Zeus has raged across our part of the world. We've spent quite a bit of time indoors playing board games mostly - one of our favourite occupations and an important homeschooling tool. And something we can do in spite of the frequent and prolonged power cuts (hence today's rather short, belated post!).

Right now we're loving classics like Carcassone which we've amended the rules to so that we can play cooperatively as well as more recent additions to our selection, Jamaica and Mapominoes. We love games and all enjoy playing. We adapt the rules so that everyone can join in and insist upon the importance of just enjoying the playing not only winning. 

Some of our games like Conjudingo (french) and Chronicards(french version of Time Line) are obviously educational and help with specific skills, conjugating verbs, learning history, counting or maths to name a few. But in fact all our game playing has educational value. Board games offer a really ludic way to integrate skills like communication and cooperation as well as strategy and anger/frustration management. Rory's Story cubes develop our expressive, creative and literary skills as does the wonderful and very original Dixit.

In fact we like games so much and find them such a wonderful way to learn that we recently attended a games festival with more than 200 board games. We're also always looking for new games. So if you have any favourites of your own do let us know.

Our next purchase...

This post and it's title turned out to be inspiring which for me was a nice confirmation of why I write a blog - it gets me thinking about things, about our life together, here and it stimulates my creativity. Pictured below a draft of a poem I'm working on titled Storms and Board Games!

Scribbled notes for a poem