Our connected game

23 April 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

image by sueatkins1.wordpress.com

My kids came up with this game that they call their "connected game." It's the coolest thing ever and I totally wish I did that as a kid.

They both like different things. My daughter wants to play house and "family" and princesses but my son wants to pretend he's a transformer, or a power ranger, or a dump truck, or Spider-man. It's really cute to watch them play this game, because one will be almost totally oblivious to what the other one is playing, but they think they are playing together. It goes something like this:

"I'm the mom and here's the baby. You can be the daddy."

"And I'm Optimus Prime and I have to fight Predaking!"

"And the baby needs food, so I'm feeding her."

"And Predaking is attacking with all his bad guys."

"And then we'll all draw together. But the baby can't draw."

"And then Optimus Prime is hurt. Predaking cut his arm."

"And I'm going to draw a dolphin and my baby. Ooo the baby will be riding the dolphin."

They're playing together, but they are in their own worlds.

The coolest part of the game, though, is that they can connect anything they want into this world. So when they see a new TV show or a movie that they think is cool, they'll often say, "I'm going to add that to our connected game, okay?" And then they act like they are holding a power cord and find a wall and "connect" the idea into their game.

They don't do that for every idea, and sometimes my daughter "disconnects" things she doesn't like from the game and my son cries (he's older than her). He hasn't realized what power you have in imaginary games yet, I guess. For him, it's real.

Anyway, I love how they found a way to make every cool thing in their lives live within this one game and how they can play together no matter what they are playing.

People say that creativity is about connecting unrelated or semi-related ideas, so in that sense, we should all play the connected game and maybe it will make us more creative.