Thing-A-ma-Bots, Fun for the Whole Family

A few Thursdays ago, I found myself dreading our family game night. Just seeing my six year old bring out the Chutes and Ladders box made me go into cold sweats. I wanted to run, wash dishes, clean the cat's litterbox, do anything, I mean ANYTHING but play that game again. I don't mean to be so rough on Chutes and Ladders; we have had some fun with it as a family. But let's be honest: It's really pretty boring for adults. Candy Land? Not any better in my opinion. I'm forever stuck in the molasses.

It's a challenge to find a game that you can play with your kids that you both really enjoy. Typically, the games parents like are too complicated, while the ones the kids can play are not the least bit interesting or challenging to adults. Add in a mix of readers and non-readers in the household, and it becomes even harder to find a fun family game.

Well, I finally found a game that we love in our household. It fosters creativity, builds memory skills, and makes you laugh! We all can play, too, since it doesn't require any reading or number recognition. And it plays pretty quickly (unlike Chutes and Ladders that can drag on and on as you keep falling down those chutes!). It's a little card game called Thing-a-ma-Bots.

To play, you deal out the cards and leave them in a stack in front of you. At the beginning of a new round, each person flips one card face up in the middle of the table for all to see and names it. You can name it anyway you'd like: Charlie, Chunk-Chunk, Stella, Zazzapants, 05673 UK. Each player takes a turn flipping a card and naming the funny character. When you see a match, the first person to remember the name and shout it out claims all the cards. Then a new round begins!

As characters are matched and claimed, they become Thing-a-ma-Bots and can help you steal piles from your opponents if you shout it out first. But if you're wrong, you lose a card, so be careful!

Sounds simple, right? It is simple to learn and get started, but trust me, you'll be laughing so hard at some of the names your kids come up with that it will be hard to concentrate. Plus, as rounds go on, it gets more and more difficult to remember which name was from which round and which character is now a Thing-a-ma-Bot. Got all that? Good, now try it and have some laughs with your kids!