Episode 374 – Top 5 Games to Beat the Summer Slide

The Family Gamers Podcast

What are some games we can play to keep our kids’ skills fresh over the summer?

374 Fact

374 years ago on June 9, 1650, the Harvard Corporation is established as the first legal corporation in the American colonies.

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What We’ve Been Playing

Super Snipers
Donuts
Compile (our review)
Tournament of Towers (our review)
Pyramidice
Captain Flip – a nominee for Spiel des Jahres!
Jinxx

Welcome New Members

Stop in and say hi!

Backtalk

Last episode, we asked about conventions. What’s your favorite convention? Do you bring your family?

Derek Bruff loves Tennessee Game Days and lets his kids pick new games to try.

JP has only been to small local cons with his kids (Gen Con and Fan Expo Toronto without them) and prefers the small local ones. They’re cheaper and you can drive home each night!

SNAP Review – Mycelia

Whether you think mushrooms are delicious or gross, you’ll love the cute mushrooms in Mycelia, a intro-level deck-builder with plenty of variation for more experienced players.

Watch the video or read the transcript (with pictures) of our review.

Beat the Summer Slide – with Board Games

If you have kids in school, you’ve probably heard of the “summer slide” or summer learning loss. The best way to keep your kids from losing math and reading skills is to use them! So let’s talk about five games that will give some practice.

1. Math Rush

“The most fun I have ever had with math flash cards!” Math Rush is truly all about reinforcing your math facts, but it does it in a fun way. Buy the version that makes the most sense for your kids: Addition/Subtraction, Multiplication/Exponents, or Fractions/Decimals/Percentages. And check out our review.

2. Kingdomino

You are going to practice addition and multiplication over and over in this game.

We really like the original game, but any of the variations and sequels will work well too.

3. 10 Days in the USA

Keep your USA geography knowledge. Plan routes through the states. You don’t need to know already where each state is, but you’ll be referencing them on the map and relating them to each other as your build your route.

And check out Gameschooler Podcast episode 175 about the newest version of the game from The Op.

– Honorable mention: The Scrambled States of America Game

4. Unmatched

This is our top recommendation for reading – especially for ages 10 and up. Not only will you have plenty to read on the cards, but they’ll also give insight into the stories, which might pique your kid’s interest to read more about these characters!

Whether it’s ancient mythology, Marvel characters, or Jurassic Park, you’re sure to find something your kid will enjoy.

5. HerStory

This is a great opportunity to get some more history into your summer – but even if none of these historical women grab your interest, you can force a little bit of reading here with the one-page biographies on each card. See our review for more.

Runners Up

Math: Anything with score keeping, especially if it involves multiplication (Mind Up!, Next Station, Splito, Metro X, etc.)

Reading: Any game with a theme that hooks your kid and keeps them reading. (Horrified, Marvel anything, The Hunt for WWII naval history)

Vocabulary and Spelling: Illiterati – since it’s cooperative, there’s lots of room for Mom & Dad to help.

How about “Board Game Summer Camp”? The Tabletop Family came up with a new set of challenges for 2024: https://thetabletopfamily.com/board-game-summer-camp-merit-badges/

New Backtalk Question!

There was a Battleship movie and a CLUE movie. Terraforming Mars is getting its chance for a TV series. If there was any board game you wanted to see a movie or TV series about, what would it be?

Andrew’s would be Hero Quest. Anitra’s would be Tesseract.

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