My name is Marion and I love board games. Born somewhere in the seventies, as a child I mainly played monopoly and Game of the Goose. Later, all kinds of card games were added.
I can still remember rainy holidays when, crammed into the table of a small caravan, we played Canasta endlessly and fanatically.
During my studies the games went along, but they became a bit in the background. Although, they moved outside and were for larger groups. I became a member of a children’s activities committee run by students. We organized holiday weeks for children from families who could not afford a holiday so easily. During my entire study, I was playing outside full-time every holiday for two weeks. Under the guise of ‘fun for the kids’ I had a lot of fun myself.
My studies are now light years behind me, I teach Dutch, I have a 13-year-old son and I live in a terraced house. In that house are a number of cabinets full of games. Because the game world has also matured. Dare I say we live in the Golden Age of games! Monopoly and the Game of Goose have now been overtaken by Catan, Carcassonne, Pandemic, Codenames: games around all kinds of themes and with different game mechanics.
I have always used games in my own lessons. Especially as a work form to practice teaching material. It was only through my son that I discovered the real power of games. I saw that games are also an exercise in social skills, in executive skills, and that games allow you to discover the world around you in a safe context.
Games have even changed my perspective on learning. I wrote about it in one of my blogs. As a parent, I pretended to be collaborating with my child, but actually, I had already had in my head how we would play the game for a long time. As a result, I was no longer open to his ideas. When I did, his ideas turned out so good that we narrowly won the game. It was an eye opener for me.
Games are often seen as ‘fun for the break’ or ‘something for kids’. We just like to play! Also as teenagers and adults. For example, the Dutch/Belgian TV program Wie is de Mol (The Mole) attracted 2.5 million viewers in 2022. The computer game Fortnite has 350 million registered players worldwide.
