Thursday, December 4, 2008

Games Me and Simon Play

This actually might be a cool German lesson for some of you. I'm not sure if that interests anyone, but there are some folks who understand German and read the blog. Maybe y'all'll empathize.


  • Thumb War: I translate the taunt: eins, zwei, drei, vier, Ich fange den Daumen Krieg an! (one, two, three, four, I'm starting the thumb war. I don't know the word for "declare.")

  • Hide-and-Go-Seek. (verstecken) I hate not knowing exactly where he is, though, so we rarely play this. There's a phrase that you say to indicicate that the person hiding should give a little peep, but I forget what it is precicely.

  • I Spy with My Little Eye: Ich sehe etwas das du nicht siehst.

  • Go Fish. I don't translate the "go fish" part. It's awesome. I don't know what the King, Queen and Jack are called in German, though, so we just say their German letters.´


  • When waiting for the bus, I've created this game that involves jumping, sitting, touching or running around a pole depending on what colour car we see. It makes the time fly and people give us funny looks.
  • Milles Bornes (1,000 miles). It's a French (or Canadian?) card game that I've recently taught him. He caught on so fast! But it's hard to keep track of his mileage as well as my own.

  • Ente Fuße (duck feet). It's not really a game, but it's something we'll joke around with in the morning. When shoes are put on the wrong feet, you call it "Ente Fuße," which I think is pretty much adorable. Sometimes Simon crosses his legs and pretends that he has duck feet and tells me that I put his shoes on incorrectly.

  • Lots of board games. Mostly The Game of Life (Spiel des Lebens), Sorry! and Monopoly Jr. He could handle the regular Monopoly, but I can't. Our Sorry! game is in English. If you don't recall, there are cards numbered 1-12 that indicate how many spaces you can go and other specifics. For example, 1 and 2 allow a piece to exit your starting place, but with 2, you're allowed to go again. He never has to be reminded of the rules, even though we don't play it very often, which I find remarkable.

  • Chess! (Schach) I taught him how to play. He's good. In my defence, I do suck at that game pretty hard.

  • Airplane. (Flugzeug) I hold him in the air above me so his stomach rests on the bottoms of my feet. It's really fun to play on the trampoline.

Above is a castle that me and Simon made for the Meerschweinschen (guinea pigs).

3 comments:

Janet said...

Wow fun. You should look up the card game Spite and Malice. Its fun--like solitaire and crazy 8s mixed together sort of. The rules look complex, but its not really very hard. Katy just taught it to me when I visited her over Thanksgiving.

Also, do you ever play Settlers of Catan? I hear its the monopoly of Germany, and we have started playing it in our mod a lot.

Mandie P said...

Josephine and Lino like to play "Crocodile"- which is just code for wrestling. I pretty much hate it bc he's big enough to body slam me now- and has done it before onto the couch... ouch!

other than that we have lego and play mobile- which I didn't have play mobile when I was younger so I SUCK at putting the stuff together for her. so we mainly stick to lego and playing "school"- where she "teaches" me- or so she thinks!

Rachel said...

janet,
settlers of catan? the name rings a bell, but that might be a false alarm. Thanks for the recs.

manda,
my sister and i used to play "crocodile" on the trampoline. one person became sorta snake-like (the crocodile) and the other had to avoid being touched by her. there were lots of rules to this game. me and Simon have a version of it, actually. maybe hemi would dig it. better than body slamming!
and
even when i was a kid, i hated playing pretend. when simon wants to use that imagination stuff, he can play alone or do a crafty thing with me. that's cool that you find interest in it, though.