Saturday, July 07, 2007

Up Words on Independence Day

I'd just about recovered from the shock of Sweet M playing fetch with one dog and cuddling another, when she wow'ed me again.

We'd gone to a Fourth of July barbeque at the home of some friends and Sweet M, the first child to arrive, retired to the TV room to watch Cartoon Network. Not surprising — this cartoon retreat — but always just a wee bit disappointing.

Other children arrived and joined her in the TV room and before long their were 3 or 4 of them watching Pokemon.

I'd stopped in to check on them, when, to my astonishment, Sweet M went to the shelf full of games and pulled out a Scrabble-like boardgame called Up Words and set it up. For the next 40 minutes or so, M was playing a board game — a language-based board game at that — with two other kids.

What is going on here? Can this be the Brain Engineering, or is this just a neurological and social growth spurt?

I don't know what to think, but I'm buying that boardgame from Amazon.

5 comments:

kristina said...

Up Sweet M! Talk about independence day and fireworks.......

Maddy said...

Why is there no warning to the poor benighted parent when they decide to up and do something extraordinary like that! It's enough to give you a heart attack. Must be seasonal or something as we're having little unexpected splats too. Good for her and good for you too.
Best wishes

Chaoticidealism said...

What a sweetie! But you are right; so much changes between the ages of seven and nine--school, literacy, a wider world, so much more to think about and try to understand. They certainly grow up fast.

MothersVox said...

McEwen, you are so right . . . they really oughta give us some kind of heads up about these sorts of changes!

We bought the game Up Words and have played it three times this week. Actually one night we played it as Sudoku, because the new version comes with a numbers layout option. Fun!

M instigated it. It's family game hour and we have special drinks -- a glass of North Fork Long Island chardonnay for the mom and dad and glass of chocolate milk for the little one. Fun!

And yes, Kristina, definitely some synapses firing like fireworks this summer. So much fun!!!

Karyn said...

As an extra bonus with the pieces of upwords, you can divide the pieces into vowels and consonants. You randomly choose 3 vowels and 5 consonants and write down all the words you can think of using only those letters. Having the letters there to move around works better for the visual mind, and you can even do it in the car if you don't get car sick. If you get competetive you can get one point for each letter of each word made, then swap your letters with the other person.