Playing Cards / Kartenspielen

With many cold rainy days, we've had quite a lot of time to play cards. Nikolas has enjoyed Go Fish for a while, though has trouble holding all the cards in his hand. Yesterday when playing in the hotel playroom, he spotted a group of adults outside on the patio playing cards. "Look Mommy!" he said. "They're playing Go Fish!" He doesn't yet understand that there are, actually, other games you can play with ordinary playing cards.

He's also enjoyed playing Memory for quite some time and he is good at it. He can beat Peter and me almost always, even when we are really trying. We've got memory cards with a variety of different objects (a flower, a telephone, a dog, etc.) and cards with a variety of faces. For Christmas he got some memory cards with brightly colored dinosaurs on them which is a little more challenging because groups of the illustrations are in similar color schemes or poses which makes it a little more confusing. His most recent favorite set of memory cards, we found in our games' cabinet. It's a set with photos from 32 sites around Salzburg. It takes a long time to play, and how he can keep so many different pictures straight in his mind, I don't know. But, he has yet to lose a game.

The latest card game to be added to his repertoire is Uno. We first played when the Program director from the University of Maine was visiting a couple weeks ago. Nikolas was unloading everything from the games' cupboard (why?) and pulled out the baggy with the Uno cards in it. He wanted to play and so we did, giving him very little instruction actually. He picked the rules up quickly, watching what we were doing and taking our pointers. Since he likes to lay his cards out in front of him, it was easy to make suggestions, though it didn't take long before he didn't need any suggestions at all. He even 'gets' the special cards, understanding that playing a 'Pick 4' card or a 'Skip Your Turn' card works against the other player. He grins mischievously when he does it and has a knack for calling "Uno!" first.

Despite the weather, we had a great weekend away. You can see more photos (many of which are parcours photos!) here or in the Photo Albums in the right side bar.