Filling the Tank

We are board game players in this house and the kids are starting to pick up on it.  When we have game nights with friends Ethan always wants us to play a game that he can play as well.  One can only take so many rounds of Operation, Mouse Trap or, (please no!) Candyland.  At 6 (and a half!) the choices are pretty limited, but we've found a couple successes.  The first one is Dixit Journey, which is a game of creativity and weirdness.  It's fun for adults, but it helps kids learn adjectives and vocabulary.  I would describe it as Apples to Apples in picture form.

So that one worked, and he can play a round fairly quickly with all the adults.

But then, last Sunday, Steve pulled out his old Solarquest game, and Ethan has been enraptured ever since.  They played together on Sunday (which Ethan declared his "best Sunday ever"), and then after school and homework on Monday, Ethan sat and played the game against himself for over two hours.  To say he was overjoyed that his dad offered to play with him after dinner would be an understatement.  Anyway, it doesn't seem like they make that game any more, unless you want to pay bookoo (buku?) bucks on Amazon, but it's so neat seeing him enjoy the time with his Dad and the game itself.  There may be something similar out there,as the game is basically monopoly in space.  Ethan tells me that he has won twice, and Steve tells me they were fair and square wins, not just Dad-being-gentle wins.



I would say that Ethan's "love language" is quality time, so a good game of Solar Quest seems to fill his tank right up to overflowing.