I read aloud these picture books today:

A wonderful look at the remarkable Abigail. I don’t agree with the list of women achievers in the back but I do love Abigail. I learned quite a bit from the book, even though I read the bio of her husband by David McCullough a few years ago which does mention its fair share about her. I also love the HBO series of John and Abigail by Tom Hanks, especially Laura Linney’s performance of Abigail.

This one’s a darling encapsulation in picture book form of Gary Chapman’s Five Love Languages. If I had a little girl at home I would totally get her into the Lola Dutch  activities here. Maybe I can get Bugsy playing with the puppets at least.

This one’s a great book to illustrate local interdependence. It’s fun to see the cascade of events that culminate in blue ribbons at the county fair and a young girl set a goal and achieve it. I’ll be adding this one to my list of goal-getter picture books!

For our Language Arts themed day of gameschooling, which is Monday, we had to play Codenames after scoring it while thrifting recently! The kids liked it. I think they will grow to love it as they play it more and get into the groove of the language subtleties of the game.  It’s a great game to teach strategy, thinking ahead, word associations, and connecting with the brains of other people. I plan to play it often with them on Mondays, and customize the cards, using terms from the different books I’ve read to them, by using index cards with words I write on them.

I’m also going to use pictures to make my own “Codenames Pictures” from three different sources I already have so I don’t have to make anything up:

• cards from an old Disney Memory Game I have from when my older kiddos were little. Hey, it’s instant Disney Codenames, DIY!

• cards from the Dixit Boardgame
• cards from this interesting boxed set of cards I’ve never heard of before that I discovered while thrifting last week, seen here. I paid less than $2. Because the cards were sitting in the board/card game section of the thrift store, I thought the set was a game and got them. Now that I have them here at home I’m realizing it’s not a game. Apparently it’s a promotional gift/advertisement for visiting a retirement center, LOL! I  like the cards…they have kind of old-fashioned, unique photographic images on the front and then questions on the back to ask people, especially older people, about their life, to increase human connection through storytelling and prevent dementia. I’ve been wanting cards to use with Dixit that aren’t quite so creepy and God and his angels delivered! So while not a game per se, I’ll take ’em.

I’m hoping to play Codenames online in my zoom room soon. I’ll let you know how it goes. I figured out how to suspend my iPad from my chandelier so that I have a webcam to pick up the image of a board or card game displayed on my dining room table. Then I’ll text the code card via phone to any remote spymaster.

We also played Quelf for Family Home Evening, this time with Dad/dear husband, instituting the new house rules I wrote about here, in the Monday 3/16 of that post. We all had fun. It’s definitely a game that is better with more people, especially high energy people. Any game that makes people smile or laugh or have sparkly eyes is a winner in my book, and this game did that tonight at least once for every one of the five of us.

Go here if you want more info about gameschooling! And here’s how to start the #abookandagameaday challenge for 2020!