Paper Games

Timmy was sitting at the art table looking sad on Friday afternoon.

I found a moment to go sit with him and ask what was going on.
He had a piece of white paper divided into columns.

"Oh, I am just trying to design a video game," he said, "And it's harder than I thought."

He explained that he was trying to take a character from one place to another and having trouble deciding on a quest and weapons and other things. I told him about a game I'd played with my kids once or twice when they were younger.

"We divided a piece of paper into six columns. Column 1 had characters, column 2 had a treasure or quest, column 3 had a tool or weapon, column 4 had some method of conveyance... you get the idea. And for each column, there were six choices. You rolled a die to find out what each of your items were, then wrote or dictated a story based on that."

Timmy lit up. "I love that idea!!!" he said enthusiastically. "Do you have dice?"

So I got him a die. He was so pleased that he brought the paper and clipboard outside so he could continue designing his game. That lasted about three minutes, then he was invited to play frisbee and ran off to join his friends.

I wish every answer to every question was as easy as that one. :)

He's an intense kid. Another one who is so interested in everything BUT school work. Not that I blame him.

Okay. Back to dehoarding and cleaning and trying to make things presentable both for company and for my lovely daughter who's coming home soon.