Educating Risa

The boys and I did some shopping this morning, trying to get it  out of the way before the regular school kids are out for teacher’s convention (tomorrow and Friday) and Family Day (Monday). Our first stop was Indigo Books, where Daegan used the last bit of his birthday gift card (from last June!) to buy the latest release in the Dinosaur Cove series: Tracking the Diplodocus. Then it was off to Zellers to take advantage of some $10 off coupons for family games I’d been saving until there was a good sale. Zellers put a bunch of games on for $14.99 this week, which meant we picked up Pictionary and Cranium for less than $5 each, brand new. Now that’s squeezing a dollar til it cries for mercy!

The boys were very curious about Cranium, so they set everything up in the living room when we got home, and we played our first game, adapting the rules somewhat. It was really fun—certainly worth the $5—and I was honestly surprised at how well they did at it. Here’s some pics:

So here’s what you get in the game: the board, 4 ‘men’ (red, yellow, blue, green), an eight-sided, four-coloured die, pencils and paper, clay / playdoh, and the four boxes of questions. Blue is ‘creative cat’ and the questions ask you to draw (sometimes with eyes closed!) or sculpt with clay the answer your teammate needs to figure out; red is ‘data head’ which has factual questions (true/false, some ‘what is this?’ pics); green is ‘performing star’ in which you need to act out (charades) or hum the answer; and yellow is ‘word play’ with word jumbles and puzzles and things. There’s a lot of variety in type of question, but the boxes are much smaller than Trivial Pursuit boxes. We’ll see how replayable the game is after a while.

So Gareth started and Daegan had to sculpt him the answer. Here it is—what shocked me is that Gareth got it right, immediately.

The original answer on the card was “Canadarm” (that’s the arm on the space shuttle), but as neither Daegan nor I thought Gareth would know that, we decided to change the answer to ‘arm’. Daegan naturally made a dinosaur arm, and Gareth got it. Huh.

A while later on Daegan’s turn, I adapted the answer ‘birthday suit’ to simply ‘birthday’, and Gareth drew it.

Daegan watched how Gareth drew it and narrated, “Hmmm…oh, so it’s a cake…with candles…so the answer is birthday!” Yeah. It was freaky. They spend a lot of time together.

After my stellar charade of ‘breakfast in bed’ (which both boys got), and two hummed songs (Que Sera, Sera and Frere Jacques—which neither boy got), it was Daegan’s turn to draw for Gareth. The answer was fingerprint, which proved to be much harder to draw than anticipated. Afterwards, Daegan said, “Oh! I should’ve just drawn a Blue’s Clues paw print!”

The game ended with Gareth needing to sculpt a well-known nursery rhyme. He’s just got the tails done in this pic. Can you figure out where this is heading? (hover mouse over pic for answer) 

All in all, with just a little adaptation here and there, this was a very accessible and fun game for my 7- and 5-year-old. Ignore the “teens and adults” label on the box.

We’re waiting to play Pictionary until Jim gets home tonight. No doubt a good decision after one of the final rounds of the game which saw me drawing for Daegan.

Me: Ok. It’s two words. But I’m going to draw them separately. (I start drawing)

Daegan: Ok…it’s a flower.

Me: Right. First word is flower. (I draw a new picture)

Daegan: Ummm…ummm…dead guy in a box?

Me: (laughing) Flower dead-guy-in-a-box????? Let me try again. (I draw anew)

Daegan: Ummm…is that supposed to be a house? Or an airport?

Me: (laughing so hard I am losing it now). No. Ok. Last try. (I go back to my original ‘dead guy in a box’ drawing, but add a bubble coming out of the guys mouth and mimic snoring sounds).

Daegan: Oh! He’s in a bed. So flower bed!

Yeah, I’m thinking if my drawing of bed could be mistaken for an airport, we ought to wait for some additional adult back-up.