Games for 6-year olds

Here’s M-ito’s list of most played with toys over the last month. The key word here is LEGO, LEGO, LEGO. When I was growing up we had model airplanes, ships and tanks. Children today have LEGOs. And they are better. Let’s face it, there’s no glue (and subsequently no glue sniffing), no razor to trim the flash and therefore no stitches from cuts, no parts that don’t exactly fit together, no waiting for the glue to dry before putting the next piece on, no painting the pieces when you’re done. What you get with LEGOs is an incredibly complex model with a ton of pieces, that works like a giant puzzle with directions that are fully visual (no reading required) and that can be played with when you’re done. The pieces snap together perfectly and they look very, very cool in their realistic colors and stick-on decals. My job is to help find the pieces for M-ito that he can’t find for himself. He puts all the pieces together and won’t allow me to help with that at all. Sometimes he’ll ask me to see what’s wrong if he thinks he’s made a mistake but that’s it. He’s even figured out that if you open only one bag at a time – and the bag that is numbered to go with the pieces he’s working on – it’s easier to find the right pieces. We did all the Aqua Raiders sets by opening all the bags at once and mixing them together. Not easy for Daddito to find the smaller pieces with his failing eyesight. Still these are great things to do with your kids. I heard a father tell another parent this when he was asked about the bionicle he was buying. “We do them together,” he said. How cool is that? M-ito can work on the more complex sets for hours. His favorites to date include:

• Aqua Raiders
• Star Wars
• Indiana Jones
• Bionicles
• All of the Creator 3 in 1 models (you take the model apart and create two others with the same pieces)
• Mars Mission
• Castle

What’s the downside? Many of the sets are war-like and have guns, swords, knives, etc… So when we play nobody ever gets killed – they get knocked out and always come back to fight again. It’s a small victory over violence at playtime but it’s all I’ve got.

M-ito’s other top six favorite games are (in no particular order):

• There’s a Moose in the House (excellent card game from my favorite game company Gamewright Games)
• Duck Duck Bruce (another excellent card game from Gamewright)
• Dino-opoly (the old favorite for the dinosaur set)
• Zooreka (a great game about building your own zoo from Cranium Games)
• Slamwich (another game from Gamewright about making a sandwich!)
• Stack (a stacking dice game that’s very colorful and easy to carry from Talicor Inc.)

We’ve also added baseball mitts (I got one too) – though a knock on the head with a spongy version of a baseball has caused a small set-back, a volleyball, a handball, and a fishing pole (two attempts to fish and no luck so far but lots of fun). What’s sad is that some of the old favorites like a ton of Little People sets and figures have left to go on to other children. Sad and beautiful, both at the same time – of course.

800 Numbers

Mom-ita found a piece of paper by on the coffee table. There were 800 numbers written on it in M-ito’s handwriting. She asked him about them and he said, “I wanted to write down the numbers of the things I wanted us to buy.”

M-ito has been watching commercials these days on Animal Planet and it’s been a little unnerving to see the power of advertising. He now thinks Mom-ita and I need foot patches because we have dry feet. That Activia will help us both with digestion. And the Dyson vacume cleaner would make vacuming for all of us easier because “it has this ball on the bottom that makes it go from side to side easier.”

Last night he didn’t want to come to dinner because a commercial was on. “I’ll be right there,” he said. 

“But its a commercial,” Mom-ita said. “We’ll tape your show so you can watch it when we’re finished.” When it was silent for  while she said. “You want to watch the commercial, don’t you?”

Almost mindlessly, like an automaton, he nodded and whispered, “Yes.” Then he picked up his pen to write down the number that was flashing on the screen.

What’s in Ned’s Head?

Of all the gifts that M-ito received – and as the only child in our combined families to date he received a lot – What’s in Ned’s Head? takes the prize so far as his favorite, followed by The Story Book by fundex. Oh there’s lots of others he plays with but these seem to be the ones he spends the most time with and the one’s he asks me to play the most. It’s only been three days but patterns have already been set. Why is Ned’s Head so interesting to him? Well, first there’s the gross-out factor. You stick your hand inside a large head – from either the ears or the nostrils – and search for items inside like bird poop, a used lollipop, barf, a used q-tip, a tooth, a brain, an alien, or a dirty diaper. That’s about all you have to say as far as the why is concerned. They even give you additional blank cards (the card you pick directs you to search for a particular object each round) so you can add your own stuff to Ned’s Head. M-ito has so far added a rubber snake, a rubber lizard, a pterodactyl skeleton, and a ladybug. It doesn’t seem to matter who wins (finds their object first) to M-ito. He simply likes to dig inside the head for treasure. Fundex comes up with a winner again.The second game, The Story Book Game, is a card game that contains a deck of 54 cards with items/people on it like a hammer, a singer, a little man, a lobster, etc… Each person picks a card and has to use the card in the story the players are creating, card by card. Each player has to retell the story correctly and in order up to that point then add his/her own card to the mix. A recent example from a game this morning goes like this, “There once was a hammer that fell into a well and needed a rope to get out. It was friends with a singer who also needed a rope to fix her microphone. Before she could fix it she got hungry and ate a hamburger and a lobster. But before she could eat the lobster a mouse came along and carried it away…” You get the idea. So far we’ve made it up to fifteen cards. M-ito wants to make it to all 54.

Dad-dito-ism: Bag of Tricks

Definition: Bag of Tricks – back-pack that parents carry containing games, crayons, pads of paper, coloring books, small plastic dinosaurs, etc… that can occupy their child and their child’s friends while eating out so that parents can attempt to communicate with each other during the meal. Use: “Did you bring your bag of tricks today?”

The Things I Carry

Contents of Backpack today:

Clean canteen stainless steel, 24 ounce, filled with water

Pen box with eight different colored art markers, four multicolored pencils, and one 005 prismacolor fineliner (for M-ito)

Plastic crayon box filled with crayola C’s

Three small drawing pads, two for M-ito and one for Dad-dito

Keys with M-ito’s camp bead project attached

Sticker book

One sheet of Thomas & Friends Stickeronies

Two marker books with black paper tablets and four clear markers to etch the black away

One travel Huggies wipes – filled

Two fruit roll-ups, grape and tropical fruit

Six Faber Castell art pens and two fine liners (for Dad-dito)

64 cents in change covered with dirt and crumbs from bunny crackers, saltines, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and bagels

Pencil sharpener, usable for crayons

Bug Balm (no deet)

Sun Screen/bug balm (spf15)

First Aid kit with bandaides only

Three plastic dinosaurs (corythosaurus, tyranosaurus, stegosaurus), plastic bear and two plastic dogs

One elephant finger puppet

Three snapples bottle caps (M-ito’s collection)

Two green tea bags, caffeinated

Dentyne gum

Lip balm (vegan hemp)

Pink and Purple mermaid bracelet (M-ito’s) – it’s been lost for about two weeks