Taking a break from my posts about travel & living in Singapore, I have a confession to make. The Girl is addicted. Hopelessly & completely addicted to playing games. Card games to be exact. I blame my friend Gaby who brought the games to Thailand & got her hooked.
Families have game nights once a week. It's game night EVERY night chez nous. After dinner, she would lug her card games to my room & we would play several hands before it's time for bed. It has become our nightly routine.
Kids are extremely competitive & she gets upset when she doesn't win. But I have a rule & that is I don't try to let her win. She has to learn how to lose graciously & only by losing, will she learn how to play better. As a result, she has gotten so good at some games that she consistently beats her mum.
All the card games I'm about to introduce are from a French company called Djeco, who by the way makes great games & art kits. The cards are all beautifully designed & very good quality. I expect the ones we have to last us a long time, despite our constant abuse. They are perfect to bring along when travelling. We enjoy them so much I fully intend to collect their entire range of card games. In Singapore, you can buy them from The Better Toy Store.
The first one of the lot that I got is the classic Happy Family that we all know & love. Djeco does it with cute animal characters depicting various occupations - dog doctors, sheep hairdressers, cat fishmongers etc. She never seem to tire of this.
The next one is called Zabifuzz. A game that requires quick reflexes & good eye. The aim of the game is to be the first to get rid of all your cards. In a centre pile, each player has to throw down their cards in the right order - hat, T-shirt, underpants, pants, socks & shoes from their own stack of cards. In the beginning I had to prompt her what comes next but now she needs no help & consistently beats me. We get very noisy when playing this. Oh & we use the same set of cards to play snap. Even noisier.
This I bought 3 days ago so she is still getting the hang of. I like this because unlike the previous one which is pure action, this requires a strategy. There is a food chain of animals from the strongest to the weakest - from the lion to the crab - clearly depicted in a series of cards which are set aside as reference. Each player will draw one card from their pile & throws down simultaneously with the other player. The one with the stronger animal in the *fight* will win the cards. This goes on until all the cards are thrown down. Whoever has the most cards win.
This seemed like a good idea when I bought it. Cards that glow in the dark. The objective being to collect all the parts to form a full skeleton. Not unlike Happy Family but because you only have 2 types of skeletons to assemble, it's not very challenging. After playing a couple of nights, it was been left sitting in a corner. Seems a pity to let this go to waste. I might have to get creative & come up with another use for these cards.
So if you don't see me updating my blog, you'll know that I'm busy playing cards with my daughter.
For the first time, I watched Emily of Emerald Hill & I was in love.
I've gushed often about how much we love the Esplanade. Now we have one more reason - library @ esplanade. 
It has a fabulous selection of foreign movies. An entire aisle of them. I couldn't believe my luck. Movies that you won't be able to find at Poh Kim Video Store. French, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Iranian, Russian. I could hardly control myself. 
The first one of the lot that I got is the classic Happy Family that we all know & love. Djeco does it with cute animal characters depicting various occupations - dog doctors, sheep hairdressers, cat fishmongers etc. She never seem to tire of this.
The next one is called Zabifuzz. A game that requires quick reflexes & good eye. The aim of the game is to be the first to get rid of all your cards. In a centre pile, each player has to throw down their cards in the right order - hat, T-shirt, underpants, pants, socks & shoes from their own stack of cards. In the beginning I had to prompt her what comes next but now she needs no help & consistently beats me. We get very noisy when playing this. Oh & we use the same set of cards to play snap. Even noisier.
This I bought 3 days ago so she is still getting the hang of. I like this because unlike the previous one which is pure action, this requires a strategy. There is a food chain of animals from the strongest to the weakest - from the lion to the crab - clearly depicted in a series of cards which are set aside as reference. Each player will draw one card from their pile & throws down simultaneously with the other player. The one with the stronger animal in the *fight* will win the cards. This goes on until all the cards are thrown down. Whoever has the most cards win.
This seemed like a good idea when I bought it. Cards that glow in the dark. The objective being to collect all the parts to form a full skeleton. Not unlike Happy Family but because you only have 2 types of skeletons to assemble, it's not very challenging. After playing a couple of nights, it was been left sitting in a corner. Seems a pity to let this go to waste. I might have to get creative & come up with another use for these cards.
Last night we had an interesting conversation about celebrating Christmas.
