The Games We Play - a Joy post

Hyrum really loves cards. And he's watched us play board games that use cards and has wanted to play with us. There are a couple of games with cards we have let him play, and he fell in love with one of them:

Candy Land.

He discovered it in his room in a drawer that he had never opened before (and that we hadn't realized he could open yet - no longer baby-proof!). I think that's part of the magic - the game that appeared out of nowhere.

[I dub this picture: the blond Hyrum Weasley.]

So I told him what it was and he wanted to play it with me. So I got it out and we played. I tried to teach him some of the rules - funny thing to do with a 2 year old, I guess. And we went through the game twice using one little gingerbread guy and taking turns picking up a card. And he liked it and he said, "again again!" I said, "Maybe Daddy will play with us."

So then for Family Fun Time - that day or the next, I forget - Hyrum starts saying "Candy Wand. Candy Wand." It was Derrill's turn to choose the Family Fun Time activity, so I told him he'd have to ask Daddy to play it. He agreed, so we played again, and then he wanted to play it again the next night (his turn to choose), and Derrill reports that he has asked about it about half the nights when he gets put to bed. He points up to the game shelves that he can't reach and calls out that he can see Candy Land. "Candy Wand! Pway Candy Wand!"

And when he chose Candy Land for his family fun time activity, it was the first time he had chosen a non-movie for his family time activity, so I was pretty impressed. 1) That he was still interested 2) That it was not a movie.

A day or two later I was playing with Hyrum and he wanted to play Candy Land. I said okay and got it down and let him play with it however he wanted to while I went to do something else and let him play with it in his room. Because it did seem that he wanted to play with it in a different way than we wanted to. So I went back to the room to see what he had figured out, and he had started matching the cards. He had grabbed the blue cards first (the cards with the blue squares) and put the cards with one blue square together and the cards with two blue squares near them. When I came in, he was finishing that and had started with the green cards. This is not surprising since these are two of his favorite colors.

I was really impressed: with all the cards in Candy Land, how persistent he was in getting all of the cards of the same color together! since in the past he seemed to get distracted when working with too many cards at the same time. So he wanted a matching game while we were trying to play a board game. He also enjoys matching the candy cards to the pictures on the board, particularly the gumdrop and Mr. Mint.