Games Tasting at the Senior Center

Our first meeting at the Veterans Park Senior Center in Redondo Beach began with a game of Tumblin-Dice. It was at least as effective, and fun, as I had thought it was going to be - easy to learn, challenging, and yet with enough luck to keep people from taking it too seriously. Especially, given that people had come into the center expecting to learn more about how to play Texas Hold 'em. Even older people, who had difficulty standing, were moving around, waiting for their turn with very apparent glee. The only obstacle was keeping score - doing the arithmetic calculations of adding and multiplying the spots on the dice - which, of course, is part of the challenge for children as well as seniors. Since this was the first game we played, I helped with the scorekeeping. Trying to slide the dice into the scoring areas was more than enough to keep people focused on fun.

But the event really didn't become major fun, until we started playing A to Z. At first, there were just enough players so we could have one for each of the 4 boards. There are two dice - one, the category die, determines which of 6 questions you are trying to answer, the other, the timer die, determines how much time you have (15 or 30 seconds), and two special events - one that allows you to cover up any empty space, and second which lets you take chips off the board of any other player.

As I taught the game, I suggested that we ignore, for the time being, both of the dice. When it was someone's turn, that player would pick a card, select any one of the six categories, and start the timer (giving themselves 30 seconds). I think, because we knew we were ignoring some of the rules (cheating, perhaps?), the game became even more fun. Later, when more people came in, we had to share boards, so it became a game between teams. And this made the game even more fun. Individual players didn't feel so pressured because they were part of a team. We all knew we were kind of cheating (picking whatever item we wanted from the category cards, disregarding both dice), so the game became a shared thing, one that we had all adapted, for our own use, for our own fun.

And major fun it was.



from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Number Chase

Number Chase is a number-guessing game, involving some serious arithmetic skills (like understanding greater than and less than, odd and even, number range and properties). But you don't have to tell the kids that. The game is so clearly fun, so gently challenging and enticing, that it just doesn't matter to the kids that actual arithmetic skills that are being exercised. Who, besides teachers and parents, cares about all that number comparison and identification and deductive reasoning? The important thing is that the game is actually fun enough to play and play again.

Number Chase is one more Major FUN-award-winning game in Playroom Entertainment's Bright Idea series. Designed by award-winning fun-maker Rienhard Staupe, the game consists of 50 thick cards. I emphasize "thick" because it is a testimony to the wisdom of a good game manufacturer - knowing that cards, in the passion of play, get mangled, creased, and generally yucky. By having the good sense to make the cards thick, we are gifted with a game that will last long enough for the whole family to enjoy.

There are 50 cards, numbered, as one might expect, 1-50. To play the game, the cards are placed on the table, sequentially, in 5 rows of ten. One player (let's call her the "emcee") writes down a "secret number" between, as advertised, 1 and 50 (all right, between 0 and 51, if you insist on literal betweeness). The guessing player or players select any card. If it just happens to be the right number, that player wins the round. If not, the card is turned over. On the other side of the card there's a question about the number the players are trying to guess (e.g. "Is the number less than 42?"). The emcee answers yes or no. Then another number is guessed. Another card turned over. Another question revealed ("Does the number have a "5" in it?"). Etc., etc., until the correct number is finally chosen.

Everybody stays involved in the game, because every answer is relevant, even when it's not your turn. So, everyone is having fun, everyone is thinking, deducing, exercising what he or she knows about number properties. And as the guesses become more and more educated, so do the players.

In other words, if you were trying to help educators understand the nature of a successful learning experience, Number Chase is the very game you'd want them to know about.