Four-Year-Olds and Games

A few observations about playing games with 4 year olds:

When Madeline was 4, she loved to play Candy Land. Except, she didn't really want to play with the cards. She mainly wanted to play with the girl and boy figures (especially the girl ones). The game playing was more about relationships than any gamesmanship.

When Henry was 4, he liked to invent games. They had convoluted rules, involved superheroes, and were time consuming. I didn't spend much time playing games with Henry at that age.

Grace also likes to invent games, but her rules are much simpler. She's not that concerned with winning, and she's more inclined to have herself lose a turn than have me lose a turn. Interestingly, style if very important to her. The hand gestures involved in throwing the (pretend, usually pink) die are also very important in determining what happens on each turn.

Surprisingly, I've found that I have more patience in playing games with 4 year olds than I used to.