A long holiday is coming to an end. Rainy days, too hot days – summer is interesting in many ways here in Japan (though we are still waiting for this year’s first typhoon) and the time spent indoors has been quite extensive. So to make everyday life feel new we have tried to make something exciting every day in when it comes to play at home. I do not know where the idea came from first, maybe the dinosaur museum we visited a month ago, but one thing led to another and suddenly we were sitting at the dinner table my son and I, cutting paper cards into smaller business card sized pieces, sticking dinosaur stickers on them, writing names and deciding their strengths and weaknesses. The result was a card game that we were playing over and over again, drawing cards, choosing what feature to play and then making a dino-battle to see who wins.
The dino-game was a lot of fun, and we decided to make one more card game. One morning after swimming school the following week, when we went to the 100-yen shop to buy a bag for pool use, we also got a sheet of vehicle stickers. And after having chosen what vehicles to use, put them on the cards and written their names, my son decided how strong, fast and cool they were on a scale from 1 to 10 (although he choose a road sign as a trumf card and set the coolness to 60000). We made enough cards to play three people and so mum joined us after work and she got to learn swedish names for vehicles as a bonus.
Next week, next game – this time a racing game played with a dice and my son’s toy cars. We drew a race track on two big sheets of paper that we taped together, and we divided the track into smaller sections. The dice tells us how far to drive, and if you end up at certain sections, things like you getting a puncture or ending up in the gravel trap will happen. We have been having fun driving lap after lap, changing cars, visiting the pits, not stopping until my son crosses the finish line first.
As I write, the next game is under development. This time a Pokemon card game that my son is working on my himself, and I am very much looking forward to playing it with him.
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