In the past 5 years, I’ve learned how to balance many things on my proverbial plate. Doctors, specialists, therapies, play time, nap time, life. It really is amazing how you learn to do so many things when you have a child that is considered medically fragile. You look at him and wouldn’t realize it, but he definitely keeps us on our toes.
I’ve tried to keep a balance with T too. It’s hard to be the older sibling and not get the attention or time the younger one gets. That’s one of my motivations for homeschooling. We get to spend time together learning new things in a way that works for him. I started this site to help share what we like and don’t like in our homeschool/gameschool life. It helps me feel “connected” to others that are spending time playing and learning with their kids. (It also helps me keep my writing skills working. There are some things from my working past that I miss!)
This past week or so, we’ve been playing several games of Animal Upon Animal-Crest Climbers and Animal Upon Animal: Small and yet Great from HABA. It looks like an easy game-you stack the animals on each other, you don’t want to knock them down, and you want to be first out. Looks can be deceiving! You can only use one hand, and 
the animals cannot be perpendicular. T is pro at this game. (He did play solo games, maybe that helped him.) He can get the animals to seemingly balance on the smallest portion of the stack. I, on the other hand, knock them down. I don’t have the steady hand that he does, and I’m just not coordinated. 
It doesn’t stop me from playing though! It’s good fine motor practice, something I’ve learned a lot about when taking the boys to therapies.
Yesterday we took the Small and yet Great version with us to an outing. I knew there would be some down time, and I wanted to not have to listen about Minecraft the entire time. I love that the box is small and fits easily into N’s wheelchair bag. (I could probably take up less space by putting it in a drawstring bag, but I’m afraid it would get lost in the abyss that is the bag.) T played a few games with his cousin that was in town. It was fun watching him explain the game to her and then trying to balance the super tiny animals upon each other. I won’t lie. My favorite animal is the frog. I need to get more of those frog pieces into my life.
I was looking at the HABA website and noticed they have another version of the game Animal Upon Animal-Here We Turn! It looks to be the same concept, building animals up, but upon a rotating disk. I think that looks really cool, and yet, scary! I wonder if that would be a challenge for T…
I’m hoping the next few weeks will be full of game posts for everyone to read. I picked up several fun games at Origins and we’ve been slowly playing our way through the pile. I also have some future Kickstarters lined up to play and share. This is the time of year when the game companies are releasing their new games. It coincides with Gen Con, a huge convention held in Indianapolis. I am on the wait list for media tickets for that one. I have a feeling I will be watching everything from Ohio, but we’ll see. Just looking at the floorplan of the vendors/exhibitors can be overwhelming! Luckily, if I do go, I have a plan for the boys so they won’t have to be overwhelmed themselves. (Yay for family near Indy!)
Have you been playing any games lately? Old games, new games, new to you? I’d love to hear what you’ve been up to-so be sure to let me know. Here, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram…whatever works best for you!
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