Not At School Today

Jude has developed a real thing recently for ”grown-up” board games. They’re really accessible in a cupboard in the hall, so he will just go and get one out and say “Mummy, can we play this?” And, although we’ve got quite a few games for his age group (3), I’ve actually found it quite easy to adapt the board games he’s chosen to suit his level.

This morning, the game was Risk. Everyone else laughed when he got it down, but I thought, I know we can do something with this. There’s a great map on the board with all the continents in different colours. Jude chose the black soldiers (black is his favourite colour), and I chose the yellow. I also made up 6 coloured cards to match the colour of the continents. The rules were very simple:

1. Pick a colour card
2. Find the continent that matched that colour
3. Roll the dice
4. Count out that number of soldiers, and put them on the right continent. 

That was it! Jude loved the little cannons, horses and soldiers. I thought that the “winner” could be the one who got rid of all his soldiers first, but we ended up just playing until Jude wanted to do something else. We had a great time, and he’s now more familiar with North and South America, Australia, Africa, and he knew that we lived in England, and I showed him where it was, in Europe, on the map.

So, if your little one shows an interest in board games, ignore the “age range” and go for it!