The Games We Play

When I was a little girl, I know I played jacks and dug in the dig and roller skated and drew with crayons.  When I got a little older, I played baseball (badly and only because there weren't enough boys)and drew with crayons and colored pencils and played solitaire and Parcheesi and rode my bike.  Nothing I did was really intellectual.  The only game I can think of that would fit that description was chess and that was usually thought of as a grown-up's game.

My nine-year-old grandson plays chess and plays it well.  He plays it well enough to beat D almost every game.  G'son loves games of logic and was thrilled when we gave him the board game "Risk".  We played Uno, and he skunked me.  All three of us played Scrabble which he started playing with me on my Kindle the last time he was here.  He didn't win but wound up with a score in the hundreds.  We sat together and he played Hearts (again on my Kindle) and he won game after game after game.  Since he was naturally doing well, I started teaching him to count cards and figure the probability of how many spades the other players had so his discards would be more logical.  He soaked it right up.

 

He's in the last half of his third grade year and knows his square roots.  He can do math in his head (I have enough trouble doing it on paper!) and knows the multiplication tables.  Fractions are new, but he understands the concept.  The continents, countries (and which continent they are on), oceans, and seas and their relative sizes is no mystery to him.

 

Is he brilliant?  No, reading isn't his favorite although he can read, writing isn't a pleasure, and spelling still catches him unaware.  Basically, he's good in science and math and weaker in English and social studies.  Like us, he has his strengths.

 

What amazes me is what he and all other third graders in NY are learning!  They are so far ahead of where I was when I was in third grade that it doesn't seem possible.  While I understand that each generation experiences this, I know I didn't really think it would change so fast or go so far.  It wasn't all that long ago that I was teaching seventh graders who didn't have the same gasp of basic math as my grandson.

 

Of course, I don't either, and I still play with crayons, colored pencils, ink, and paints.  I hope g'son won't lose his zest for games as he grows older.

G'son patiently waits to play Risk while D tries to figure out the instructions!