Aren't libraries great!

In my catch up post, I completely forgot about one of the highlights of the week!  Last Saturday, due to 'popular demand' according to the posters, (we're pretty sure this is my friend Ka and I filling in the event feedback cards last time) Imagination Gaming were at the library for the day.  Therefore we were there pretty much all day too.  We popped home for a quick bite to eat at lunchtime and K had her ballet lesson, but apart from that we were there from when they were setting up until the end.

We tried Pinnochio first (rather bizarrely, I can't find it anywhere online).  This was never going to be one for my girls, because it involves bluffing/lying and they are very reluctant to do so.  The idea is to decide if someone is telling the truth or not about something to do with one of four categories on a card, then depending how many people believe them, they and those that were wrong about whether they were lying or not have to build up Pinocchio's nose until it falls down.

His nose got rather long!

At the girls' request, we had a go at one of the games that we played at the last session back in the autumn; Anomia.  This involves looking out for matching symbols between yourself and other players and then coming up with something in the category on the other player's card before they come up with something on yours.  Does that make sense?  It's a tricky one to describe and quite tricky to play, but a good one.

Anomia

Cloud 9 was one that we all enjoyed.  It's a really simple idea, where you have to weigh up the likelihood of someone being able to match the colours thrown on the dice with the cards in their hand.  You get many more points if you decide they can and they do, but lose all the points if they can't.

Cloud 9

M and her friend A had a few goes of Chickyboom, which, while for younger children, has loads of potential for use in exploring levers with slightly older ones.  To play you take it in turn to remove an item from the seesaw.  The items are different weights with corresponding different values and you get points for each item you remove until the seesaw falls off.

M & A playing Chickyboom.

One that I played, first with Chris from Imagination Gaming who was running the session (in a quieter moment), and later once each with a couple of the girls' friends, was Stratopolis.  I really liked this one.  It's a two player game, where your largest unbroken  surface area of colour gives you points by multiplying the number of tiles (from above) by the number of tiles in the stack at the highest point in that area.  You each have your own L-shaped tiles and have one, two or three squares of your colour and the rest of the three squares are either black or (one) red.  You can put the tiles on top of others, but not red on top of green or vice versa, thereby increasing your own area or sometimes blocking your opponents.

I won!

The tiles of Battle Sheep are fantastic and it's another really good game.  It's a game of strategy, where you try to spread your sheep out as much as possible over the field of play whilst trying to block other people from doing so.

Battle Sheep!

This is another one that I can't find online.  There are two sets of cards, one with letters and the other with categories.  The letters are set out around the pile of category cards and as soon as the category card is turned over and read out, players call out a word that fits the category.  The first person who does so takes all the letter cards that are in that word, then the next player does the same until everyone has had a go.  The gaps left are filled in with new letter cards and a new category card is turned over.

Fast Words

M watched another M play this one with a friend of his, before playing against him herself.  To be honest, I didn't entirely follow, but they seemed to enjoy it and it was very strategic.  This explains Brave Rats far better than any attempt I could make!  To start with my M lost every round, but then something suddenly clicked and after that she won several rounds in a row before moving on to something else.

The game.

Playing it.

We all made a point of giving lots of positive feedback to the library, so we're hoping that it won't be too long before they're back again.  Apart from us and two other families who are friends of ours and were also there for a big chunk if not all of the session, there were probably another half a dozen families or more who dropped in for a while and seemed to enjoy themselves too.

In other library news, a book that we borrowed from there, Ruby Redfort Feel the Fear, got us talking about base 3, since there's a morse code type code in the book but it uses indented and protruding dots as well as no dots in a pattern, so is ternary rather than binary (dots or no dots) like morse code.  We also talked about the decimal system that we use as well as binary code that is the basis of computing.

Having finished Ruby Redfort, we have moved on to another library book, The Star of Kazan, which is by Eva Ibbotson, who wrote a number of other books that we have really enjoyed.