Family Time - Game Night with Candy Land Castle Game

I'm really trying to get into having a regular Family Game Night.  I think it is important for all kids, but especially for Dew1 and Dew2 to learn everything that is involved with games.  Taking turns, having someone win (and technically, someone lose), following rules, taking care of toys ... all rules that our boys need to be reminded of often.  No pieces in mouths (a big one in our family!)

So this game was on Dew2's Christmas List, and was a gift from Uncle G.  Admittedly, I thought that it was going to be a challenge and learning activity for Dew2, but it turns out that he's already mastered matching shapes and colours.  So now it's an actual game!

I'm sure there are rules to follow (in fact, I know there are as they are printed on the back of the gingerbread play shapes), but here's how we played.  Each person got a Gingerbread board that has four shapes on it - two on the hands and two on the feet.  Each board has a different combination.  The plastic castle shape holds and dispenses the shapes.  They are put in the top of the castle, and when the plastic candy cane is pulled down, a coloured shape pops out the bottom.  We played that each person got a shape, and if it didn't match their gingerbread board, then it was put back into the castle.  Regardless of a match or not, each person got one shape per turn.

We played tonight for the first time, and had good success!  Everyone took turns nicely - Dew1 even repeated "My Turn" or "Dew2's turn", and no one lost their temper.  Each person worked the castle on their own turn, and everyone was fine about that.  We even got to play an entire game!  The boys didn't quite get it at first, so DaddyDew and I helped things along, like asking if they had a match, or deciding that they didn't and moving along to the next person.  But if they did have a match, we let them make it on their own.  And the amusing thing is that Dew2 won!  We celebrated the win together, and then cleaned up.  There was a bit of upset at the clean up, but everything went so well we just sang the clean up song to distract them.

A successful family event!  Yea!  We might be making progress yet.