If reading boardgame rules is fun, you have a promising law career in your future. For the rest of us, it’s far less painful to YouTube tutorials. This applies to nearly every 21st-century question. How to fix a drain, do a muscle-up, change a tire, troubleshoot Apple Airplay.
Since we are all “homeschoolers” now, I’m trying to be more cognizant of teaching moments in our normal routines. This week as we sheltered-at-home it’s been a boardgame bonanza. Even more than it normally is around our house. Boardgames are filled with teaching moments. But this week we spotted an opportunity for meta-learning as well as the 21st-century skill of “googling it”. We broke out the boardgame Pandemic for the first time with our 6-year-old. Instead of teaching him how to play, we turned the tables.
The assignment
We asked him to learn how to play by finding a video on Youtube then teach us. I supervised his progress and interjected suggestions as he approached the problem.
How it unfolded
- Finding the video
The first step required typing “how to play pandemic” into the search bar. We use YouTube through a smart tv. That means painfully typing with a remote control. But there was a silver lining…as he added a letter the auto-complete options would narrow. Once I pointed this out to him, every new letter he typed came with fun feedback. Seeing the autocomplete list change. By the time he got to “how to pl”, all of the the suggestions began “how to play…”. When I asked him what would happen when he added an “a” to his query, I was delighted that he recognized the autocomplete list would not change. There was some thinking going on. Cool. By the time he got to “how to play p”, the suggestion “how to play pandemic” appeared. He reacted like he won the lotto.
The video I wanted to use was one of the first search results (I myself had learned to play from this video), so I prompted him to select it.
- Learning how to setup and play
Just as an adult would need to he quickly learned he needed to pause the video every few moments to follow-along. A methodical, painstaking process. He had to maintain attention and be persistent. Worthy lessons of course. The actual rulebook can be used as a reference. In our case, we had a different edition of Pandemic than the video which was a slight but welcome complication since it provided another teaching moment.
- Teaching us how to play
This was the step where I had to play my largest supporting role. Filling in gaps as he explained to mom. Teaching games to people is an art in itself. Requiring empathy and patience and strategy. Knowing what you need to explain upfront vs what will become trivially clear once you start playing. There’s a balance between how much a person should be asked to retain to get started and actually getting started. Our kid probably tilts more towards lawyer…overexplainer, so I have to cut him off (he gets excited, its actually pretty cool) in the spirit of expediency and momentum.
Next time you crack open a new game, see if you can have your child learn the rules and teach you. It’s a great way to get more out of the game than its embedded lesson. And when your kid gets good enough at this you can pass the torch of household rule explainer. It’s a thankless role. Another idea kids should learn early.
Happy gaming and homeschooling!
Here’s the video we used. I highly recommend Rodney Smith’s Watch It Played tutorial series.