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Yeah... Teach your kids the games they are interested in, and use that as an opportunity to build bonds. Poker, chess, go, Catan, Magic, whatever. Trying to o

Yeah... Teach your kids the games they are interested in, and use that as an opportunity to build bonds. Poker, chess, go, Catan, Magic, whatever. Trying to optimize your child is so backwards to me.

TacticalCoder 4y ago
> Trying to optimize your child is so backwards to me. I agree. My daughter loves Catan: we'll play on sunday even though she's a bit young for Catan. Recently she discovered hexagonal grids in which you have to find words placed randomly... She loved it. So I quickly wrote a little program generating hexagonal grids and placing words randomly (and then filling the remaining empty hexagons with random letters). Now she gets to pick the words (the name of the cat, the names of her plushies, etc.) and I generate a random grid and print it. She loves it even more because now the game is tailor made! As a bonus I got to introduce her to some programming concepts: showing her first how the program can generate a little grid of only 2x2 hexagons, then 3x3, then a bigger but still empty grid. How I can then have the computer put a word randomly on the grid. Then another word. Then fill the remaining empty hexagons with random letters. She was sitting on my lap looking very interested... Then I told her she could now choose which word she wanted and from there she was totally hooked. It made for a happy mom too: it's the first time I coded something for my daughter and it felt good!
- Herodotus38 4y ago
  That’s great. Can I ask more details about which hexagonal grid word game you found? I only know of is the NYT Spelling Bee game.
minism 4y ago
Thank you for saying this. This attitude drives me insane
jjulius 4y ago
Agreed. My other issue - why just one? A kid can't learn to play two different games?
danrocks 4y ago
This. Also, if I recall correctly, teaching kids games expecting that the skills will transfer to other areas is a futile exercise. Let kids tell you what they want to learn.

Yeah... Teach your kids the games they are interested in, and use that as an opportunity to build bonds. Poker, chess, go, Catan, Magic, whatever. Trying to optimize your child is so backwards to me.

TacticalCoder 4y ago

> Trying to optimize your child is so backwards to me. I agree. My daughter loves Catan: we'll play on sunday even though she's a bit young for Catan. Recently she discovered hexagonal grids in which you have to find words placed randomly... She loved it. So I quickly wrote a little program generating hexagonal grids and placing words randomly (and then filling the remaining empty hexagons with random letters). Now she gets to pick the words (the name of the cat, the names of her plushies, etc.) and I generate a random grid and print it. She loves it even more because now the game is tailor made! As a bonus I got to introduce her to some programming concepts: showing her first how the program can generate a little grid of only 2x2 hexagons, then 3x3, then a bigger but still empty grid. How I can then have the computer put a word randomly on the grid. Then another word. Then fill the remaining empty hexagons with random letters. She was sitting on my lap looking very interested... Then I told her she could now choose which word she wanted and from there she was totally hooked. It made for a happy mom too: it's the first time I coded something for my daughter and it felt good!

Herodotus38 4y ago
That’s great. Can I ask more details about which hexagonal grid word game you found? I only know of is the NYT Spelling Bee game.

minism 4y ago

Thank you for saying this. This attitude drives me insane

jjulius 4y ago

Agreed. My other issue - why just one? A kid can't learn to play two different games?

danrocks 4y ago

This. Also, if I recall correctly, teaching kids games expecting that the skills will transfer to other areas is a futile exercise. Let kids tell you what they want to learn.