Crafting with Kids

Whether you’re having a couple of friends over, hoping to break the ice at a party, or looking for some post-dinner family entertainment, boardgames provide hours of entertainment. Looking in your closet, you notice the usual suspects: Connect-4, Operation, Snakes and Ladders, Monopoly and The Game of Life. Seems like it’s time to update your game collection! As you grow older, you’ll need to buy games that are more suitable for parties and group fun. You’re in luck, as we’ve scoured the Internet awards lists, blogs, news articles and best sellers lists to find the hottest games of 2009.

Writers on the site www.about.com recently weighed in on some of their favorite party boardgames and family games of the year. Scene It is a new game that teenagers particularly love that works with a DVD player, where opponents have to guess which movie different scenes are from and shout out answers to movie trivia. There are also variations like Disney Scene It, Seinfeld Scene It and Harry Potter Scene It for the devout fans. Quiddler is a fun word game that works well at teaching kids their language skills. Similarly, Scattergories is a great game for wordsmiths, where players roll an alphabet die and fill out a list based on that letter (like “Sports Teams that start with S,” “School Items that start with S,” or “Foods that start with S.”) Cranium is an amazingly fun game that combines Pictionary drawing, Trivial Pursuit trivia, Charades and sculpting all in one. Them Versus Us is a fun game for households with two guys and two girls, since it’s a battle of the sexes game.

The 2009 American International Toy Fair in New York City introduced some great new boardgames this year. Pants on Fire (3 or more players, ages 10+) is a fun story-telling game, where a player writes brief stories about each of the three topics revealed. For example, a “bad date” or a “first job,” and the other players have to guess if the story is “true or false.” Another fun boardgame, Pressure Point (3 to 8 players, ages 10+) has players racing against the clock to give answers down a list of questions as quickly as possible, while other players bet on the number of correct answers they think the player will give. Masters of Venice (2 to 5 players, ages 10+) uses games strategy where players must act as 15th century Italian merchants trading spices, silks, gems, iron and grain, while playing alternate characters like thieves, harbor masters and gondoliers. Time’s Up: Title Recall (4 to 8 players, ages 12+) is a fun party game that asks players to guess the famous person associated with famous books, movies, songs and albums. A new 10th anniversary edition of Time’s Up has also been released this year.

You will be happy to hear Mensa has released the five winners of their 2009 Mind Boardgames competition. Their press release stated: “Mensa Select games are chosen based on a variety of categories including aesthetics, instructions, originality, play appeal and play value.” Cornerstone is their favorite of the 3-D strategy building games, which challenges players to have a steady hand and clever mind. Dominion is a strategy game where players try to earn the most victory points by building the best deck including buying action, treasure and victory cards. Marrakech has everyone role-playing salesmen who are rolling dice, moving pawns and making decisions, while trying to outwit the competitors. Stratum has players layering pieces to cover their opponents. Tic-Tac-Ku is similar to Tic-Tac-Toe except that there are nine playing areas.

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