It's early - so time to talk Chickens

I noticed an acquaintance on facebook post pics of their family playing Jenga. It's a fun family game of steady hands and frustration (especially resetting the game for play).  Just kidding, we do have a couple versions of Jenga in the house - even one which features Donkey Kong.

But we have a different game we like to play to practice steady hands, it is called ChickyBoom. We first got ChickyBoom when our eldest was 3 years old. It actually was the first game she picked out herself from our local (favorite) game store.

She was drawn to the brightly colored box and funny looking wooden purple 'chickens'. We were drawn to the 'skills' the game said it would build: Balance; Manual Dexterity; Risk Assessment; Arithmetic (and yes, I was drawn to the wooden game pieces).

So game play goes like this.

1. Find a playing surface that won't have an animal knocking it over or purring up against it.
2. Place the balance beam and fulcrum on it.
3. Place the chickens, hay bales & wagon wheel weights (they are numbered so you just make sure your sum is the same on each side of the fulcrum)
4. Take turns removing a chick, hay bale or wagon wheel off the balance beam until it all goes BOOM!

It really is fun (and grownups after the kids go to bed it could quickly turn in to an adult beverage game) and score is figured by counting up the numbers of the pieces.

Little hands will impulsively grab for the biggest pieces but after some play (and watching) they will start to develop some strategy to make sure the balance beam collapses on the other players (instead of them).  Adults will enjoy trying to out smart the other adults - just be sure to watch those 'trashcan words' when you fail at pulling the right piece!