A new stage gaming with my son?

While our son has been interested in board games for a long time (not surprising since he has grown up kind of surrounded by them) but watching me play games with an out-of-town friend made him even more interested.

10 Days in Africa was what really caught his interest. I really, really hope that someone picks up the license for this series. I have two of the games but I can see myself wanting more of them as our son grows older.

The actual Racko-style mechanics are still a bit beyond him so we just went through the country cards and found them on the map, as well as name them. He was entertained and hopefully some facts slipped in.

Since then, I’ve pulled out other games to see how he’d interact with them. 10 Days in the USA was an obvious choice. ZERTZ also came out, although that was just stuff for him to mess around with. Shuttles interested him but the full game couldn’t keep his interest. 

I had almost gotten rid of Cheeky Monkey but now I’m glad I didn’t. Our son asked specifically for it. We’ve gone over the actual rules a couple times but he hasn’t been that interested. However, inspired by 10 Days, I had him count and then sort the animal tokens on the bonus discs.

The biggest success so far has been Tantrix. I’ve always liked it better as a puzzle system than as a game and using it as a puzzle system with a four-year-old has worked well. We’ve spent a fair bit of time with it and I think that will continue to be the case.

I’m obviously adapting games into other activities but he’s having fun and I’m hoping this will lead to playing by the rules :D