Looking for a fun new game for your grandkids? My 5 and 7 year old grandsons and I had a lot of fun with games this summer and we wanted to share our favorite with you. Pictureka is a funny sounding game name, with a funny looking board, that they absolutely LOVE! There are 9 board cards that you set side by side in three rows to make one huge board. They have a “zillion” different pictures in various directions, similar to the I Spy books and the Where’s Waldo? books. There are three sets of playing cards. Very simply, you pick a card, then look on the big board to find the picture from the little card. Sometimes everyone looks at the same time. Sometimes, only the one player looks, depending on the roll of the two different dice (one with colors and one with numbers), and the arrows on the playing cards.

The rules for this version are quite simple. BUT the game is geared for 8-15 year olds and my little grand-guys are a bit younger than that. I bought it because they LOVE the Where’s Waldo and I Spy books. Trying to play the game by the rules, I found that waiting until they were 8 for the regular game would have been better. SO we made up our own rules for a younger kids version.

SandwichINK version of Pictureka Game for Younger Grandkids:

Turning this into a cooperative team-building game, we only use the red and green cards. As each person rolls the color dice, he picks the appropriate card if it rolls red or green. If it rolls blue, he gets to choose between red and green. Then he rolls the number dice, and we ALL work together to find that many items each of whatever the picture is. It’s so much fun watching them help each other. They will often share a picture with another brother first before moving on to their own pictures.  You have to understand, this is not the norm with most of our games, so I really have appreciated the good team-work lessons they are learning.

Shopping at Target this week, I discovered there are a couple of other versions of Pictureka, including Pictureka Kubes which includes a version for younger kids. I read the directions for that, in a hurry, and had a hard time understanding them, so we will hold off on that one. It did look nice, because it takes up less room, but we are having so much fun with the primary game, we’ll stick with that for now. I am eyeing the smaller playing card version of the PICTUREKA Game, though, for our next long trip…

Family Friday is back, along with exciting happenings over at HomemakerBarbi. They have a new name, HomeEverAfter.com, along with an interesting article, Pregnancy Later in Life: Does Age Matter?