About me
I’m Marion and I love board games. Born sometime in the seventies, as a child I mainly played monopoly and goose board. Later, all kinds of card games were added.
I can still remember rainy holidays when, crammed at the table of a small caravan, we played Canasta endlessly and fanatically.
On this website, I write about games, education and parenting. When I talk to people about Pen & Pion*, they often ask what exactly I do. All sorts of things! On this page, I tell more about that ‘of everything’ I get involved in 😉
*Pen & Pawn
December
📚 How do you encourage children to read more? For example, by having them play a game based on a book. Or, perhaps even more fun, letting them make a game! I was visiting teacher Monique of group 7/8 at a school in Utrecht. Her class participated in this year’s children’s book week and made a game about the (Dutch) children’s book King’s Play.
🌈 How nice it is to receive an e-mail asking to use one of your texts in a new teaching method. Yes, of course you can!
October
This month, I want to try out more solo versions of board games. I am very excited about the accessible board game Mycelia. As far as I am concerned, it is an ideal family game with light deckbuilding. I have already played it regularly with two, three and four players. But so now solo. And then it’s a lot harder to win!!!
📩 Furthermore I am busy sending and distributing the magazine Leren met Spellen #3. If you would like to receive a magazine at home, please send me an email with your address details.
🌍 And… super cool…. the magazine has also been translated into German. You can find the pdf of it on this website (in German).
November
🎻 Played lots of games! I started November right with a game day: played games from 11am – 11pm. Among other things, I learned Lacrimosa. And with that, what I always love about games happened: we wanted to know more. So first, we looked up the music. It’s this song And everyone actually knows it.
Then an extensive discussion of how this incomplete piece of music by Mozart was incorporated into the game. Impressive how music plays a leading role here! A tough game though, but if you have a day to learn it succeeds 😉
✍🏽 How nice, exactly on my birthday I received the formatted article I wrote for the November issue of JSW (a Dutch magazine for education). Nice present!
September
🎧 At the beginning of the month, an hour of ZOOM with someone from a company that supervises large construction projects. At the beginning of such a multi-year project, she always does a game to get everyone on the same page. She contacted me because she wants to develop a new game for this purpose. Hour of ZOOMing and she had a list of ideas she could get started with.
🎲 Similarly, a couple of hours on the phone with Michiel from Gam’inBIZ this month. He wants to link his games to education and was looking for a sparring partner to think about it. After a few phone calls, he too was able to start working on new ideas. Look, you can just do that with me.
🇩🇪 In Germany, too, there are some great initiatives around games and education. That we can learn from each other is clear from the blogs my German colleague allowed me to copy. For example, this one about games in chemistry class and this practical teaching idea for practising lessons with Speedcups.
By the way, autumn is the time of games fairs. You will find them all listed in the diary for 2024.
July
🌱Worked very hard at the third edition of the magazine Learning by Games.
Designer is working on it now, at the start of the new school year there will be a brand new edition!
🎲 Learned a lot new games this month, for example these two:
August
🏖️ We’re going on a holiday to Sweden. By train! Have a great summer!
June
🙌🏼 Sometimes you come across games in the most unexpected places. For instance, I was taking my son to Scapino to buy new sports shoes. So I really thought Scapino only sold shoes and a pick of clothes…. Turns out they have a huge range of games! And not just some quartet variants, but really cool games. I had Splurt and Cross Clues on my wish list for a while. But they are no longer available anywhere. Well, so they are at Scapino ✌🏼
🛫 Cross Clues was immediately nicked by my husband, who regularly has to go to Sweden for work. His team always sets aside time to play games with each other. Cross Clues was a hit! A few words replaced with a post-it with the English translation and everyone could join in. Also in his suitcase: Set en That’s not a Hat.
🚲 Zelf bleef ik in Nederland en fietste naar kasteel Sypesteyn. Nooit geweten dat Loosdrecht een porselein industrie heeft gehad. En een beetje chique familie met een porseleinen servies had natuurlijk ook een porseleinen damspel 😄 Spellen zijn van alle tijden!
By the way, I am not a checker player. Not a chess player either actually. I used to learn from my father and even took lessons in primary school. But alas, chess is not for me. In fact, I don’t think you should play chess. Why not? Read that in this blog.
April
🌈 This month the four countries of the Teaching by Gaming project will meet again. Last meeting of the project is in Utrecht.
It is: work, play games, learn about each other’s countries and culture and of course eat Dutch cookies.
🗣️ As part of transfer, we are giving several workshops on the European project. Cool to share knowledge with each other in an afternoon and see different educational games emerge.
✍🏽 I myself am also developing a game. It should become a tool to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experiences. I started it during Corona and I am now testing the fourth version.
May
🪴 The month of holidays and spring. Still looking for a gift for Mother’s Day? I highly recommend high tea at game store The Game Inn.
🧠 New date pinned for games afternoon teens (who have ‘something’ to do with giftedness). Hope it will be another fun afternoon.
🎲 A fun activity for one of May’s days off is the recently opened Spellenwereld (Games World). A museum, games cafe, games museum and playful discovery world for children in Assen. For Spellenwereld I made a workshop Learning with Games that you can attend at Spellenwereld in the fall. Cool, because you can then immediately try all the games from the games cafe! Highly recommended!
March
💥 Wow, today I meet Uwe Rosenberg, creator of games like Patchwork, Odin, Bohnanza and many, many more. As a developer, Uw also sees how well games can be used in schools. He is organizing a meeting in Dortmund with people from the field to further discuss the topic. And to see how, also in Germany, we can use (even more) games in education. It’s an honor to be invited to this.
Yes, of course I want to take a picture with him!
🎉 Another party this month: son’s birthday. With a house full of visitors, we play Hitster. A hugely fun party game where you have to put music in a proper timeline.
Meanwhile, in addition to the basic version of Hitster, there are also: Guilty Pleasures, Summer Hits and Schlagers! By the way, I can tell you that the German Schlagers are really very difficult 😅
January
🛣️ Once in a while, I travel to Venlo to catch up with Daniel. Daniel is my German colleague and we have the same mission. In 2024, we are going to do really cool things together! One nice thing is that he knows games that I haven’t quite mastered yet because of the German rules. Like this game: Small Talk. After lunch, he explained it to me. Good game to practise speaking and listening skills. Going to write something about it soon. Click on the picture for the link to Daniel’s website.
🎲 This month, right away, the first workshop of this year: stimulating language and practicing with board games. I gave the workshop to a group of 20 teachers from an International School where students learn Dutch. It was a treat to do again!
February
🎲 A newly developed game needs to be tested and tested and tested. The same goes for the toolkit we created for our Teaching by Gaming project. At the Game Didactics conference, we were allowed to present our toolkit and have it tried out by 30 enthusiastic teachers from all kinds of courses. Here I am still standing in the calm before the storm.
🎶 A must for anyone working with games and gamification! With son and husband, I went to this concert by the Metropole Orchestra. When I think back on it, I still bounce. It was cool!!!! The orchestra played game music and we ourselves became part of a game. Cool to see how audience and orchestra made a performance together. Theatre of the future 🌟
🎒In February, I get to watch again in the classroom of a teacher who regularly deploys games herself. I will see how she organises it and which games she deploys. What I understood is that she develops a lot of material herself. I am very curious!