Every time we get into the Transporter and there is more than one kid, and always if it's F9, we have to play some brain game. F9 is the inventor of 'First Letter Last Letter' which is a word game and it goes a little something like this.
First Letter Last Letter
The basic game is to start off with a word, say 'zebra' and then the next person comes up with another word whose first letter starts with the last letter of the previously spoken word. Easy enough. But then there are variants. The first variant and the one we usually play is Category. You pick a category like animals or food or people's names and play the game. The second variant is Syllables. You go one syllable, two syllable, three syllable words until the other person is exhuasted. Sometimes we play first letter second letter, or second letter rhyme. You never know when F9 is going to throw a curve ball. The other kids hate this game.
BOL
B.O.L. Stands for Blurt Out Loud. This is F11's favorite game because she's the Huckleberry Finn of the little Bowens. She invented it, and it's just what you would expect from a girl in middle school. The first rule of BOL is that parents must grant amnesty. You start with 100 points and lose points for every confession you make that others already know about you. The dynamic of this game is very interesting. We as parents have to confess things that are on the edge of controversy but not too deep for our kids, and the kids get to confess their mischievous behavior without getting punished. Most recently we were stunned to find out that Boy has actually never caught a fish. I just hope we can keep this one going through high school.
Questionmaster
This is my game and Boy's favorite. I allow three categories. Right now we're mostly focused on English, Sports and Geography. So I give the categories and invent a question which they must answer. If the kid I ask first cannot answer, then their sib can steal. It's rather like Jeopardy. The latest variant is English Idioms. So far I've learned one idiom from them which is 'puppy guarding' which is actually like 'bird dogging' in the context of handball. This is a very good way to keep up with the slang of youngsters. And now they understand 'the cat's meow'. The problem with Questionmaster is that Boy always wants me to ask questions about plate tectonics or cellular biology where he knows exotic trivia. Ahh fatherhood.
Plates
The new favorite game is Plates, which is a variation of Punch Buggy whose vagaries I can't even figure out, but then again I don't play Punch Buggy. In California, our license plates start with one digit followed by 3 letters than 3 digits. The trick of Plates is to make humorous sentences out of those first four characters. For example the license plate '4FLS009' could be four fat ladies sang or four friends licked sausages or four frenchmen like servitude. This has yielded some real hilarity, so much so that I've almost had to pull over the car from laughing my family into oncoming traffic.
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