Saturday, November 8, 2008

Pass the Pigs

One of the things we love to do as a family is play table/card games. A favorite with the kids right now is Pass the Pigs, a "dice" game where you roll two little rubber pigs instead of dice. Points are determined according to their landing position (razorback, trotter, snouter, leaning jowler, etc) and if they land on laying down on opposite sides, it is a "pig out" and you lose your turn and any points accumulated in that turn.

It is interesting to watch the kids play. Micah and Gracia are pretty cautious and tend to "keep" their points instead of risking another roll and a possible "pig out". Jojo, on the other hand, will never stop rolling and therefore usually does not accumulate any points throughout the whole game! Apparently he doesn't understand the idea that he is losing points, he's just happy to keep rolling and in his words, "get loth of pointh!" :)

I shot this video of him during a game the other night...I think he thought I was going to take a picture or something, but it turned out pretty hilarious! And then he gets all embarrassed at the end...he is so cute! I love it that he's part of our family. :)

5 comments:

Ellie said...

Here's a new one for you, but your kids might be a bit young for it, and mine are old enough to kill over it. Mennonite Manners - one dice, one piece of paper and pencil per person. The goal of the game is to write the numbers from 1 - 100 on your paper. First person to complete 100 wins. The pencil stays in the middle until the first person rolls a one or a six. The dice is passed around as fast as it can with everyone rolling quickly. Whenever they roll a one or a six, they can grab the pencil from whoever has it, and begin to write frantically on their paper until the next person grabs it from them. Warning - this game gets messy, and don't play with Dutch people - their arms are too long!

Rebecca Conduff Aguirre said...

Haha! That sounds like fun! No, I hadn't heard of it...Micah could do it, but yeah, Gracia and Jojo still too young. Gracia likes to write her numbers, but usually ends up in tears about it if she can't figure out how to write a particular number. :( I will have to try this with Micah. :)

Another dice game that's fun is zilch, where rolling 5's are worth 50 points and 1's worth 100 points and 3 of a kind worth more, etc. If you don't roll a five or a 1, your turn is over and you lose accumulated points. It's kind of like Pass the Pigs in that you can choose to keep your points at any time.

Ellie said...

Coffeegirl should do a post on games missionaries play. I'm still convinced we know how to have more fun than anyone else in the world, although I suspect that is slowly changing with the availability of movies, video games, and internet that we never had. People just forget to hang out an play together with each other, and I really miss it at times.

Alan & Beth McManus said...

We used to call Zilch, "Greedy" or "Boogers 10,000." Greedy because if you get too greedy you end up losing your points. Boogers because when you lose your points you go, "Aw Boogers!" (the 10,000 is how many points you are aiming for.) For "modern" people they've now developed this game into a card/dice game called Fill or Bust. We love to play it with kids because we make them keep score and they have to learn to add and subtract to do it.

Rebecca Conduff Aguirre said...

@ellie-I played Mennonite Manners with Micah and he loved it! He is, of course, at a disadvantage since he's still slow at writing out the numbers, but he though it was great every time he got to take the pencil away from me. :) Jojo couldn't play, but had a great time watching!

@beth-I think that my kids would absolutely love calling that game "Boogers 10,000"! Anything that's gross is cool. I have wondered what the game Fill or Bust was, now I know. And it is great for math skills! :)