I have so many little matters to tell you of, that I cannot wait any longer before I begin to put them down.
Jul 4th, 2012 by ECM
They had a great celebration at the Reagan Library this morning! Betsy Ross taught us how to make perfect 5-pointed stars and told us about lots of different iterations of the American flag.
Ben Franklin was the only Founding Father reenactor that the kids would get close enough to take a picture.
Jul 2nd, 2012 by ECM
Jul 2nd, 2012 by ECM
Yesterday Tommy completed preschool Bible by reciting all of Mark chapter one to Daddy! (We got it on video and will try to upload it to youtube soon.) We’ve been trying to think of a fun prize for him when he completes an entire chapter of the Bible, and for this reward, he got to go to Target and pick out a new Lego set. He’s super excited and even more determined to dive into memorizing Mark 2 before the school year even starts!
In other news, our pastor announced from the pulpit that Cornerstone is officially switching to ESV! Phew. It’s good to be ahead of the curve.
Jun 29th, 2012 by ECM
The girls love the dance suites from my West Side Story soundtrack!
Jun 27th, 2012 by ECM
When Laura told me she’d be meeting her sister and nephew in Santa Barbara to visit family this week, we immediately planned a zoo trip. Baby Enoch is just a month younger than Susie, and the kids had a great time playing with each other–and with Laura!
Jun 25th, 2012 by ECM
Yesterday afternoon, I told Tommy to go play with Susie in the backyard…and looked out to see that he was conscientiously doing just that!
Jun 22nd, 2012 by ECM
I finally found our pictures from the first half of our trip. So here’s a second installment of Swiss food pictures!
This salad had warm goat cheese in a rolled cracker. Super good.
This was duck. I ate some of it. Mostly because I didn’t want to be as picky as a couple of the men who only lived on McDonalds the whole week. But it was pretty rare. I wasn’t really a fan. The roasted vegetables and potato cakes were okay.
Kumquat, crème brûlée, creamy ice cream and spongy chocolate cake. Pretty solid.
And fondue. Monochromatic, but oh, so good!
Jun 21st, 2012 by DTM
The Kids of Carcasonne (BGG; released in 2009) is a child’s edition of Carcassonne (which I’ve discussed before). There are two real negatives before I begin this review. First, it’s probably my favorite game for the kids, so the rest of the reviews have nowhere to go but down–but really, there are other great games too! Second, it’s out of print… but Rio Grande games promises that it will be reprinted soon.
To the game. This game is perhaps one of the sharpest contrasts to a typical board game. In a game like Candy Land, the beginning of the game looks pretty much like the end of the game. There’s a board with tokens on it; the end of the game looks pretty much like the beginning, except that the tokens are in a different place.
The Kids of Carcassonne, however, is a tile-laying game. The world is barren. It’s entirely up to the children to create the gaming surface. Consider what the beginning of the game looks like:
And compare that to the end of the game:
The kids have created their own world of houses and villages and bridges and fences and sheep pens. There are times after the game is over where Tommy asks to use the leftover tiles to finish up the city, or where the kids imagine that the meeples are chasing the sheep along the roads they’ve constructed. The act of participating in the creation of the game board really invests them in that world and, in my view, stimulates their creativity.
The game operates much like Carcassonne–you draw a tile and place it. When you complete a road with your character on it, you place your meeple. The first to place all eight meeples wins the game.
It’s obviously a much simpler version of Carcassonne, but it teaches them the same kinds of mechanics (tile placement, meeple placement upon completion of a geographic achievement, etc.). It is literally impossible to play a tile incorrectly–all sides of all tiles have road segments. The trick is where to place the tiles and how to close off a road. The randomness is whether you draw the tile you want; the strategy arises in deciding how to use that tile.
Tommy started playing this when he was almost three (starting probably around two years, eight months), and Lizzie has regularly played for some time, too. Three-year-olds can’t strategize much–they don’t exactly know why they’re placing the tile, and they often don’t know when they’ve closed off a road. But with a little direction from parents, they can place the tiles and the meeples. And they can have a lot of fun!
Tommy really picked up the strategy shortly after he turned five. And now he can legitimately play the game and compete head-to-head against me without any help–he wins regularly! He knows how to place his tiles, and he even knows how to foil me a little. So it’s great fun now that he can fully compete.
The game has all the ideal elements, too. It’s quick, never longer than 15 minutes. It’s durable. The wooden meeples are just like Carcassonne, only larger and more kid-friendly. This isn’t a box opened for scattering around the house; it’s usually left there for game time. It works just as well for two players, three players, and four players. It really has it all. A mature two-year-old can play; a five-year-old can strategize and win.
So no worries–there will be other games I like, too, but if you’re looking for a game that has it all (and if you can find a copy), this is the one.
Jun 20th, 2012 by ECM
The other day, I realized that I had never given Elizabeth her birthday present from Uncle Matthew, who was way on top of the game and sent out both girls’ presents plenty early. I’d intended to wrap it, hide it from her in my closet, and then bring it to MO so she’d get to open it on her birthday, but in the flurry of packing, I forgot the third step. Sorry, Matthew! Anyway, she got to open it a month late, and she’s super excited to have her own chef’s hat and a Chinese kid’s cookbook to match Tommy’s Italian kids cookbook! She also thinks it’s awesome that she got to start celebrating her birthday with her party back in April and is still opening presents in June!
Jun 19th, 2012 by ECM
I’m not going to be blogging on Tuesdays and Thursdays this summer, but I had to make an exception for Susanna’s 14 month birthday!
Kids change so gradually that moms don’t notice, but the other day I watched a Christmas video and noticed that Susie was sitting still in Grandma’s lap the whole time. Ha ha ha. That doesn’t happen anymore! The hardest thing about traveling with Q is that she can’t sit still for 30 seconds, let alone for hours. Every waking minute, she wants to move, move, move.
Her bow legs and pigeon toed-walk really seem to be more obvious. I need to get her in to the doctor to make sure we don’t need to do physical therapy or something.
She’s starting to talk! Besides the mamamama and dadadada (which don’t always correspond to the proper parent), she’s saying Hi, Oh!, and No. No usually means yes. She has finally given in and started signing “please” (it was a huge battle of wills to get her to do this!). When she doesn’t know the word (which is most of the time), she starts shrieking. We hear a lot of shrieks these days.
And she’s flirting with giving up the morning nap. She can make it through until noon, albeit crabby for that last hour, but she still only takes a 2-3 hour afternoon nap and ends up extra crabby in the evening. If I put her down for a morning nap and let her sleep as long as she wants, she’ll sleep 2 or more hours but then not do a good afternoon nap. So I’m at that fun stage of needing to put her down for an hour or less in the morning just to keep her cheerful. On the positive side, all the travel seems to have messed with her schedule so that she’s sometimes sleeping in until almost 8! That is bizarre and wonderful, especially since the kids seem to sleep in later when she does.
She has figured out how to turn around in a circle. Since her big sister’s favorite thing to do these days is dancing, Susie dances all the time, too!
Susanna is really getting into the play kitchen. She loves pushing around the shopping cart and stroller, and she loves pulling things out of the kitchen and pretending to eat them. She also likes pulling out cords from electronic equipment all over the house. She is something of a terror.
