It's not who you know, it's what you play.
It's Eleanor here, with a simple but fun game. Individually and as a family, we all love to play games : board games, card games, word games, and pencil and paper games.
I recently stumbled across a fun game on leafcutterdesigns.com, that you can make yourself, with items you will have around and about. Their version is called Infinite Possibilities, but we call ours Creative Connections, because the game involves making verbal connections, however obscure, inventive or convoluted, between small objects.
These objects can be anything small enough to place within a circle on the gameboard (probably small enough to fit in a matchbox, if that helps you to decide which objects to choose). A quick scout around the kitchen produced a dozen or so things, several more from the sewing area, rather more again from the toybox and bedroom, and finally I found a handful in the lounge. If it hadn't been snowing I'm sure I would have found many more outside - a leaf, a seed pod, a stone, a feather and so on. The great thing is, your game pieces will be different to mine, your connections will be different to ours, and no game is the same as the one before.
Here is a selection of pieces:
The rolled up felt is the game board, simply stitched, but it could be made from paper, see it below.
You each select 6 pieces to start with, and the first player places one of their pieces on a circle, and replaces it in their own pile with a fresh piece from the box. That's it for the first go. The second player then selects a piece from their own hand (remembering to replace it from the box before their turn is over) and places it in another circle. If it is adjacent to a filled circle (sometimes more than one) they state what the connection is between the pieces. There isn't really a wrong answer, but their choice of connection might prompt interesting conversation, responses or recollections. You always have six pieces in your 'hand' to choose from, and when all the seven circles are filled, you take a piece out of a circle so that you can fill it with a fresh game piece.
Here's a game in progress:
The connections offered were these - the first piece was the gone fishing sign. It was followed by the peg, as you are sited at a peg when you fish with a rod and line. Next came the pig on the basis that 'change the e to an i and there you have it'. The mighty jumping bean was placed next - pork and beans was the connection there. Then the length of string joined the board, as a washline for the peg, and was followed by Woody, who might have used it as a lasso, and as the gone fishing sign was also connected, it was declared that Woody enjoyed fishing, a statement no-one chose to refute. Finally the elephant was placed next to the mighty jumping bean, as what is mightier than an elephant?, but I can't for the life of me at 20 to midnight recall what was the connection between the elephant and the peg. Any ideas?
The box can be refreshed every so often, and when you go about your day, you will find yourself filling your pocket with suitable small items, such as a salt sachet from KFC, a plastic medicine spoon, a lost button, a foreign coin and so on. Do try the game, it's a lot of fun.
Bye for now.
