One of my erstwhile Doubles partners has recently started a blog in which he will be chronicling his attempts to teach his young son a variety of different warganes rules.
The general idea is to share his experiences / thoughts with people that are also looking for games to play with children.
He's also a teacher and runs a games club at school, so there is a bit of a 'professional' perspective to his thoughts as to how to get youngsters into playing wargames which may also be helpful and as this whole "encouraging more people to play wargames" thing is generally A Good Idea I therefore thought the blog link was well worth sharing.
The first game he played was One Hour Wargames – specifically the Ancients rules. So if you are looking for a game to play with people of a younger persuasion, or want to know how One Hour Wargames works for ancients, or indeed just have some time to kill, please take a look.
10mm Napoleonic commission
1 hour ago
2 comments:
I used to run an ancients evening with some young kids, have a mini campaign/tourney, using DBA. in 3 hours we could have 4 to 6 games with a variety of armies.
Just enough to dip their toes in and get a flavour of different armies and their characters.
Back when my son (now 20) was in 5th grade, I ran an afternoon "class" called Great Battles of History. It was quite popular--the only class that ever had a waiting list they said--and a number of parents said they wished they could enroll! The first year went wonderfully. (I relied almost exclusively on the rules presented on www.juniorgeneral.org, a fantastic resource.) I did it again the following year--it was not so wonderful. I had assumed that inasmuch as most of the kids had played the previous year, they would know what to do and the games would go more quickly and efficiently. Unfortunately for me, I had had no idea of the hormonal and behavioral changes that take place between 5th grade and 6th grade kids. With not enough exceptions, they yucked it up, laughed at everything (funny or not), walked around the room, paid little attention, etc. I gradually restored appropriate behavior, but the bloom was off the rose. If I am ever so foolish to try this again, I will restrict enrollment to 4th and 5th graders!
Best regards,
Chris Johnson
Chris
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