Good Evening readers! I hope you had a wonderful week, as I mentioned yesterday today is “Game Night” in our household and our choice game of the week is …..SCRABBLE. You know the game, where you make words out of letters and count up your points. Here’s a review of the game, some tips, a few rules and finally our own ideas.
IMG: Amazon
(The following review was played with two adults and two children. Their ages are 9 and 12)
SCRABBLE: (Vintage Games Collection) Crossword Game
by Hasbro
2-4 player game
$19.99
First, unlike many of our board games this one came in a very nice cherry-colored wooden box. Keeping the game in the box means keeping it nice and looking new almost every time we pull it out. Not to mention this keeps everything organized and gives us more shelf space, due to its shape this could easily be placed on a bookshelf or on the top of the refrigerator. Inside the box is a neatly folded (to look like a pamphlet) gameboard, 100 letter tiles, 4 racks, instructions and a soft, velvet pouch. The top of the box slides off sideways which makes opening and closing it a snap.
From my own experience, my two children have loved playing SCRABBLE so much that each morning this week one of them would pull it out and set it up. This has become a daily game, sometimes it is played three times a day with games played one or two times. They love trying to figure out words and see who gets the best score.
The rules are pretty simple:
Each player draws 7 tiles, one letter is laid in the center of the board and each player makes words. When a player can’t spell a word they need to draw. The player that does play a word will need to draw that many letters from the velvet bag. Throughout the game score is kept by adding the number at the bottom of the tiles together, plus adding additional points depending which block their letter falls on. Some blocks will read “Double letter score or triple word score.”
Ex: an “e” is laid in the center
Example someone plays, someone else may place the word “tile” off the end or beginning “e.”
At the end of the game the scores are all added up and those that have tiles still on their rack must add the bottom number up and subtract it from their total. The person with the highest number points wins the game.
IMG: Elizabeth Ferree
TIPS for Education: Parents help your children think outside the box. Pull out a dictionary and sit it on the table along with a few sheets of paper and pencils. Whenever your child asks about a spelling or a word you used have them write it down and look it up. This will help them increase their vocabulary and show them how to use a dictionary at the same time.
Family Rules: We like to use the rules I mentioned above, however some days we will have only 3 letter words, farm words, names, 5 letter words, etc. We always explain our game of choice before playing, if someone isn’t playing the draw from the bag to select the first letter.
By the way, according to the National Rules the person that uses all 7 letters from their board on one turn gets an additional 50 points added to their total. I told my crew this rule tonight and everyone is really trying to think hard to get those extra points.
Trivia: Did you know this game was invented in 1930s by a man named Alfred M. Butts when he was unemployed? It was also rejected at first and didn’t get manufactured until he teamed up with James Brunot.
Thank you for visiting our Friday Game Night, hope you join us next week. Don’t forget to tell us what you are playing.
Post from: Blisstree