Request for ideas: Game mechanics for very young children.

This looks like a parents who are in the 'poop zone' type thread.

I agree with nosissies about the level on 'thinking' that goes on in a 2-3 yr olds head (I've got a 3yr old and an 18mth old).

The idea of hiding things around your physical house and getting the kids to find them is a good one.

You could do something along the lines of 'Teddy wants to poop, but - oh no, where is he? can we get him to the potty in time? quick find him...'

You could do this with several favourite toys and it gets the 'idea' of going to loo before 'teddy has an accident' into a kids head.

This then translates into understanding as it keys into the development of roleplay in a toddlers mind.

Just a thought.

BTW you could still do something board game related for older minds with a high 'gross out' factor. 'Bodily functions' humour lasts for quite a few years (my wife would say forever in boys) so you could design a game around body functions.

Maybe there's some wind trapped in the body and you score points by getting it out of a humorous exit. Burping, farting (different sorts - SBD, pant ripper etc.) inflating the eyeballs cartoon stylie as the wind gets diffused internally - the list is endless.

It could be a great way of designing a biology education tool for kids - now that's got me thinking...

c

Following the natural stream of conciousness from English's post....
yeah, much better twist to be hiding teddy rather than hiding poop, so I was initially thinking that you'd want to have a timer that goes off indicating he's had an accident, but then what if he has a little bladder of water that leaked when the timer went off? alright, that's enough of that.

Addressing the other intersting portion of this thread, ie how to design games for the really young ones. Essentially we have to be careful of a couple of things 1) abstractness and 2)skill and implicitly 3)independant play.

Starting with 3) The way I play most games with 2-3 year old is as a team, either they are helping me, or I'm helping them. which leads to 2, the only way this age group could possibly play the game as an independant agent would be to insure that the skills required are well within the grasp of their age.

I think 2 and 3 are pretty obvious, but personally I think 1 contains the more interesting questions. Just what level of abstract thinking can the toddler be expected to engage in? How much can they relate the real world to an abstract board, or path on a board.

perhaps I'll even add another ... 4) planning. This is a huge part of many games and I think at some point kids can start to engage that aspect of the game, but not quite as early as we're talking.

One other question.... as we reduce the level of abstraction at what point does a game just become an "activity" ... is there a real difference? how can you create "activities" that build skills for "gaming"?

So, most of those are just the beginnings of thoughts, not sure I can complete many of them on a monday morning.

peace,
Tom

for 2 year olds it needs to be simple-simple-simple
even matching is too difficult for them to grasp.

How about a big toilet bowl in the center of the board with tokens around. Some tokens could have pictures of toys or animals on them and some could have poo or pee on them. The child would choose the tokens with a poo or a pee on them and they would get to put those ones into the potty.

For 2 year olds just putting things into a container is reward enough and this would reinforce the idea that poo and pee go in the potty.

Whether you use an actual board, some sort of memory mechanic or what I haven't really thought through. But here's a very basic game that could be played with a young child.

Conceivably you'd have a number of thing/people picture cards - for instance a baby, a little boy or girl, a dog, a mommy, a pig, gorilla, tree, rock, butterfly, car, horse, etc. (Although perhaps obvious, I've assumed here that an adult is playing the game along with the child and not a bunch of 2 year olds by themselves). There would also be "location" cards - like bathroom, diaper, outside, etc. The objective is to match the "animal" card with the "where do they poop?" card. Like I said this may or may not be conducive to an actual board, and could very likely be some sort of verbal game between a parent and child using picture cards. You could make it really simple and have a bunch of different "people" cards including lots of different babies and little children along with some animals and perhaps a few inanimate objects, yet only have 4 different "where do they poop?" cards - a bathroom, a diaper, outside, and nowhere - for those things that don't actually poop (like a rock). This would reinforce who poops and where is the appropriate place for the person or animal to poop. The trick is to get the little boy or girl playing the game to identify with the little boy or girl game cards and not the little baby cards.

How and whether you'd want to work in the idea of an "accident" is questionable. I'd have to think about this a bit more.

Chip

Hmm. I was having similar problems when I was teaching my cats to use the toilet. 8O

There was a "Fleet bomber" sort of game out a while back, which had floating ships on them, to be floated in the toilet bowl, and the idea was to get kids to try to hit the target of their choice. Odd, but I seem to remember that it was popular. As to the larger message presented, who can say?

Hey, maybe I'll make a "King Tut's Lost Tomb" version for my cats, to reinforce the concept of using the litter box, since the toilet training didn't work so well...