01 Nov, 2013
Have you ever played Bananagrams?
Posted by andrea tomkins in: Easy ways to make kids happy|Oh! Things!
This was the scene when the other night when I played a solo game of Bananagrams:
As soon as Piper saw me on the floor she immediately picked up her favourite “foxy” and decided she wanted to play something too. (In fact it quickly escalated to THIS.) Anyway, that is neither here nor there. This is about Bananagrams!
This game is pretty simple. Players make words out of 144 available tiles. It’s sort of like Scrabble, but there’s no board and the letters don’t have point values, and you get to make words and re-make words as it suits you. (Ok, I guess it’s not like Scrabble at all, is it?) There’s a bit more to it. You can read the complete Bananagram rules if you want to get a better idea of how it is played.
We’ve had Bananagrams for a few years but it’s recently made a resurgence here at Casa Fishbowl. I really enjoyed playing it with Mark when we first got it, but I only just recently realized that you can play it solo too. It’s fun, it’s portable, and it’s a great brain game. It’s also highly satisfying, and kind of peaceful in a way.
After I shot the photo above I got smart and started using a big piece of solid white foam board as a playing surface:
It makes it easier to move from place to place if needed, and prevents the dog from walking all over the tiles (er, most of the time).
I was finishing another solo round last night when lo and behold, our youngest joined me and helped me finish the board OF HER OWN FREE WILL. (!) It was tag team solo play, and it was nice. We looked at the board together, placing words here and there, and quietly chatted. It did my heart good.
