The Grandparent Thread

I gave my mom one that said “Family Welcome Grandkids Eat Free”

2 Likes

For Valentine’s Day, I am hanging out with GS so DD/SiL can go out to dinner. Doing this because my wife is teaching sex education at our church tonight (this is their last session and they are scrambling to get it in before kids get busy with spring sports).

6 Likes

LOL, can’t help but laugh at sex education at a church ON Valentine’s Day! And to teens!! :smiley:

7 Likes

It is sort of funny. Its a curriculum called Our Whole Lives (OWL) jointly developed by the United Church of Christ and Unitarians. It is a great curriculum that really gives kids a great set of tools.

7 Likes

The grandkids had extra time at playground and dinner that was unplanned – they were with mom. Their dad’s car was stopped in a left turn lane at the light, and two cars racing had some kind of collision in the intersection and one of the spinning vehicles hit SIL’s car, set off air bags and ‘totaled’ his older Highlander. Since he is in the Army, he went to the base walk-in to get checked out and documented care (he saw stars after his face hit the airbag). DD is in her last month of pregnancy with baby #5. They live in a big city with multiple choices on where they would meet up, and their meet up worked for their family. What a way to spend Valentine’s evening - not the dinner planned (which can happen over the 3 day weekend along with the rental car pick up and figuring on the vehicle to purchase).

8 Likes

Glad SIL is okay, @SOSConcern.

5 Likes

Looking for suggestions: I would like to start playing board or matching type games with GD. She is 2.5 right now.
What do your grands that age enjoy?

There are some great Ravensburger games. My kids like Snails Pace Race.

2 Likes

My GD liked dumping out all of the pieces and moving on to something else at that age. At 4, she’s still not interested in playing games by the rules - she makes up ways to “play” that only make sense to her. She does enjoy Jenga - but she gets bored of it before the game is over & knocks it over.

The only thing I could get her interested in that was game-like at that age was matching games. She liked Disney matching games and the Goodnight Moon matching game.

2 Likes

Snails Pace Race is inexplicably popular among the toddler set, but prepare to die of boredom. It somehow is worse than Candy Land.

4 Likes

My S and I spent many wonderful hours playing Candyland when he was young! I am pretty sure he liked playing it in preschool.

3 Likes

I think CandyLand is a bit too long and complicated for 2.5 year old attention span. And at that age they typically balk at having to move backwards.

Yes, I’m thinking maybe 4 is sn age that works for some kids.

I think matching/memory games are great as soon as the toddler is old enough, because they often can “win” fair and square so you can practice both winning and losing etiquette (always shaking hands after, “better luck next time” or “congratulations” and “good game” etc.).

We made a set of memory cards out of doubles of family photos, but I think there are probably now companies that will do it for you. That can be a fun thing also.

4 Likes

Hungry Caterpillar Board Game. 3 yr old and 4 yr old love it.

Go Fish with fish shaped colorful cards.

2 Likes

Hungry hippos board game and one with fish and magnets were popular when our kids were little.

1 Like

You asked for memory games….

Classic:
https://a.co/d/6Be2WcT

Animal version:

https://a.co/d/5C0brdc

This one is a little more interactive because she gets to flip the little doors!

https://a.co/d/1YWpIhC

You can probably find other places than Amazon.

Wow! Thanks everyone! Definitely some good options!

1 Like

I visited the grands two weeks ago and had a thoroughly enjoyable three hours playing Hungry Hungry Hippos with GS, in two stints. :grimacing: Only that game – because it is technically his older sister’s – was actually Hungry Hungry Unicorns.

They simply glued horns to the hippos heads and renamed the game.

8 Likes

My granddaughters (I have four of them) love the Mudpuppy matching games. The Ladybug’s Garden Memory Game by Nene is also a favorite. We also love the Zingo games. Even at two and a half they can play that.

1 Like