Games!

[Jennifer-72]

So ds and I have been busy clearing out the playroom the last couple of days and I was just struck by how many games have played such a great role in his development. I am sure that is the same for many of us here! I know there has been some great lists in the past of games people have used and thought it may be time to compile a new list. What are the favourites in your house?

Here are a few of our past and present big winners:

Tribbit

Pajaggle

Whoo Was It - kinda like clue but with talking animals. I find this to be a fun way to work on ds's working memory. You have to gather food from the various rooms and then feed it to the animals. I ask ds various questions about where we found certain items or who wants what etc.

Don't Make Me Laugh jr - great for working on ds's non verbal language skills

Backseat drawing jr

Pass the bomb jr

Fibber

Simon flash cubes

The sandwich stacking game by Melissa and Doug - so great for following instructions. I loved how I could change it to make it add more complexity when we were working on following three step instructions. I recall we liked all of the Get up and Go games by Melissa and Doug, but the sandwich one was particularly useful here.

We had several of the I Can Do That games which were wonderful when ds was younger.

Castle logix

Distraction

Cool circuits

I must admit I often tweak games to work on our goals so I don't always play them as intended...

[PeterPan]

Any tips on where to find Whoo Was It?  

[Jennifer-72]

I found it at our local toy store. Here is a link to it on amazon. It is a good one and has been much loved in our house.

http://www.amazon.com/Whoowasit-Award-Winning-Board-Game-Electronics/dp/B004UKNJCM

[LaughingCat]

Whoo Was It? is available on the ipad as well - and I think it goes on special every 6 months or so.

 

Distraction --  DD really struggles with number sequence repetition, even short sequences, but she does not struggle with repetition like this ('grandma's handbag' style, where both parties repeat the whole list)  - wish I knew what that meant as far as her memory LOL!

 

Here's some from me:

Blink, Spot It, Set for speed and shape comparison/recognition

Qbitz  - setting up blocks to match a shape (VT did some of this type work)

Swish - twist/flip pictures, only played it once so far though and was very hard for DD (and geez, I just saw a Swish Jr - will have to look at that more closely)

 

(I will have to look at our games bin - I know when I looked recently it seemed there were many that would be perfect - but I also realized I really struggle with adding game time into 'school' - it just doesn't happen in spite of my best intentions)

 

 

 

 

[Jennifer-72]

That is a good list. I didn't know they had an app version! Will have to get that for ds.

Do you think your dd has trouble with numbers vs words because she is able to get a good picture in her head of the items versus numbers?

We like qbitz as well. I must have loaned it out because I didn't come across it yesterday in the clean out. I will have to track it down. Pajaggle is sort of similar and is a good one for visual skills.

[Jennifer-72]

Oh, I remembered another one to add to the list. morphology jr. We have both the jr and standard version. I like the jr one better for our purposes. One of the things I like is how it sort of involves some flexible thinking in a way.

[LaughingCat]

FWIW I would not say it is numbers vs. words, but something about repeated once vs. built up and repeated multiple times. 

Although it is true that most games played this way (like Grandma's purse) are with nouns, Distraction is with numbers and DD doesn't have any trouble with Distraction either.  She can build up to quite long lists.  (Distraction does have the visual too - but DD has poor visual memory as well -- and anyway I did a 'home grown' build up style game with spoken numbers only as well, and she didn't struggle with that either).   She even did ok on the 'distraction' part of the game (remembering after a distraction).

 

But at the same time we were playing Distraction (and other memory games) if I were to give DD even a short number sequence (3, 5, 9, 7) and ask her to repeat it back to me - she would get at least 1 number wrong or out of order.   

 

When DD did her speech evaluation she bombed the auditory memory portion (although the SLP said DD was unusual because most kids who bombed that badly normally got most of the numbers wrong but DD got most of the numbers right, and with the easier sequences just out of order - but the way the test worked any mistake was considered 'wrong').  This is actually what got me started trying different memory games and ideas (none of which seemed to make any difference).

 

Anyway, sorry to derail - it's just the game Distraction brought it all back up to me.  Must be time for me to look at memory issues with DD again :laugh: