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Probably fifteen years ago or so, my wife and I found out about a seemingly simple game called “Mancala, ” known in other parts of the world as “the sowing game.”  The name derives from the Arabic word “naqala”–which translates to “to move.”

Within minutes, you can see both the “sowing” and the “moving.”  It’s a deceptive game–one that seems so simple at the outset, but becomes intensely strategic the more you play.

So now that Greg has mastered chess (!), the next logic-based game he learned at school was Mancala.  And he’s quite good at it!

In fact, we played at home today for the first time; it’s a rainy day here in Mississippi, and he’s home with bronchitis, so we’re making the most of it.  So after our traditional sick-day bonding exercise of watching one of the Star Wars movies (I censor episodes II and III heavily!), we broke out the board games.  Wow, he knows this one.  We ended up tying at one game apiece.

The game is played on a board with two rows of cups, each starting with 4 beads.  The idea is to move the beads around and eventually capture the most.

I’ve never actually tried to look up strategies in the game, but my wife and I have developed our own.  I will sometimes try to push most of my pieces to her side, in a sense overwhelming her side, forcing her to eventually push the pieces back to me.  However, by that time, enough pieces have been captured by each of us that the remaining pieces stay on my side, giving me enough pieces to win.  She has, however, figured this out!

Greg, on the other hand, has developed the deftness to already intuitively counter this ploy.  So here I am, yet again stumped by the eight year old!  Back to the drawing board.

It’s a fun game–another one that lasts maybe 15 minutes, and perfect for those with short attention spans.  And it’s cheap–here it is at Amazon.

In yet another effort to peel our eldest away from digital screens of any kind, we pulled a ‘way-back’ and opened a game I hadn’t seen in literally decades.  Chinese Chess, circa 1981 by the copyright date.

It’s a game that, in many ways, is like traditional Checkers–two sets of colored pieces taking turns jumping each other to capture them.  However, unlike Checkers–one person can jump only similarly-colored pieces, the other can only jump differently-colored pieces.  Bonus turns are awarded if your jumping piece lands on a similarly (or differently) colored square.  Instead of jumping pieces, you have the option of sliding one piece horizontally or vertically as your turn.  This first person to capture 13 pieces wins.  Average game time is about 10 minutes–perfect for my son’s attention span!

And he loves it. This is another brain-expanding game–the player needs to look for multiple options and choose the best one–or the move that will not aid the opponent.  In fact, the move can also be used to work AGAINST an opponent–so there are multiple ways to think of each move.  It’s this “multiple aspects” of each choice that helps develop problem-solving skills–and I why I think this is much more valuable than another round of “Angry Birds” ™ or “Temple Run”™.  In addition, and what is my on-going theme here, there’s the added benefit of one-on-one time with Mom or Dad.

I’m not having luck finding this version online–apparently Chinese Chess refers to yet another game.  If I find this one, I’ll post it here.