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| Plymouth Magazine, December 2007 |
Family Game Night
Spend quality time around the kitchen table
By Kelly Westhoff
Connor and Erin Naumann have a cabinet full of board games at home. Connor swings wide the cabinet doors and rattles off the games he sees. “Battleship. Checkers. Sorry!. Connect Four,” he calls.
His sister squeezes beside him and peers into the cabinet, too. “Candyland. Guess Who. Monopoly Junior. Chutes and Ladders,” her voice rings out. A second grader this year, she offers this explanation as to why she prefers board games to watching TV: “It’s a lot funner. I like to play games nobody’s played before. That way, when someone screws up I get to say, ‘Ha ha. I got you!’”
Connor, a forth grader, shares his sister’s opinion that board games are better than TV, but he articulated his reasoning this way: “When you watch TV, you just sit there and stare. When you play a game, you can’t just stare into space because if you don’t watch the board, you won’t know what’s going on.”
Luckily, Connor and Erin’s parents are eager to switch off the tube in favor of some quality family time around the kitchen table playing board games. Meet the Naumanns—Tim, Anne, Connor and Erin—of Plymouth. The Naumanns, already board game enthusiasts, agreed to a night of family fun using games from Jax Ltd., a board game company based right here in Plymouth. Jax supplied the games, and the Naumanns supplied the time. Over the course of three weeks, the Naumanns agreed to give the new games a go.
While each of the new games caused a stir, the family’s favorite was Sequence, a game in which players place chips on a board according to the cards in their hands. The goal is to land five chips in a row. To win, a player must score two rows of five. “Sequence was just a great family game. Everybody liked it. It’s definitely a game we’ll keep around,” says Tim, explaining that for the first few rounds, they played in teams with open hands. “Once we started to notice that people were building strategy,” Tim says, “we closed our hands.”
“Our family goes through phases where we really play a lot of games. We do a lot of card games at the cabin, but we also tend to play a lot more board games in winter,” explains Anne, a board member of Putting Families First, an area nonprofit organization that fosters family togetherness. “It used to be that when we played games, Tim and I had to work really hard not to win,” says Anne. “But now we can see the kids developing some strategy, which is fun.”
“They’re actually starting to beat us now,” Tim adds.
While card and board games do build intellectual skills, they also contribute to a child’s emotional skills. “The benefits of playing games are huge,” says Anne. “They’re far reaching. Playing a game with others creates socialization skills and the ability to make choices.”
The remainder of this article can be found in the December 2007 issue of Plymouth Magazine.
Jax Ltd. (www.jaxgames.com), a Plymouth-based company, supplied games for the Naumann’s family game nights. What did the Naumanns play? The list below is just a fraction of the games Jax offers.
Sequence
Place chips on the game board according to the cards in your hand. Line up five chips in a row and you’ve got a sequence. Do it twice, and you win the game. Connor’s Take: “I think kids need to be like 7 or 8 to play. It kinda confused me, and I’m 9.” (Note: There is a Sequence Kids but the Naumanns tried the regular version.)
Pegs in the Park
A counting game for kids. Draw a card, and move your peg accordingly. The first player the finish line wins. Erin’s Take: “It’s a good counting game.”
How Tall Am I?
A measuring game for kids. Roll a dice, and collect pieces to build a person. The player with the tallest person wins. Anne’s Take: “The kids like it and it’s easy for them to play alone.”
Doodle Dice
Test your doodling skills. The dice tell you which shape you can draw, the cards tell you what the picture should look like. If you’re lucky, the dice will let you draw the shapes you need. Anne’s Take: “It’s a drawing game that’s good for younger kids.”
Rock Paper Scissors
The universal hand game becomes a card game similar to war. Players lay down their cards and the top card on the table gets them all. The person with the most cards wins.
Connor’s Take: “You try to put your cards down really fast. There were arguments, and people got mad. It was fun.”
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