How Quickly Time Passes By!

I currently have my ten-year old niece and my eight-year old nephew over my house. My niece just celebrated her "double-digit" birthday. As you can imagine it was the cause of much excitement. I remember being so happy to turn 10, feeling less of a child than I did the day before. Now it is almost twenty years later and the memory lasts, but getting older is no longer anything to look forward to. It isn't necessarily the cause of concern either. Those of that are religious are healthy are grateful for each day that we have to spend with our love ones. However, birthdays don't quite have the same significance as they did when you turned 13, 16, 18, or 21.

My niece and nephew are playing each other for the first time in the classic Monopoly version that I played so much as a child. This is simply amazing to me, since I've always told them to play Monopoly Junior, because the computer does the tabulations for you. Now they are capable of all the mathematics needed to play the game, except for percentages. This is where the adults come in handy. We teach them about when to mortgage properties, what properties to purchase, when to take the risks needed to put an extra hotel or house--hoping to stave off bankruptcy.

These are tools that I learned as a ruthless Monopoly player. Tools that I'm very happy to pass down to the next generation. How can a video game compare to a classic board game? How does the thrill of shooting zombies heads off compare to the reinforcement of math skills and the building of strategy? With one you build concentration skills, with the other you might master the strategy to pass the level or to even beat the game, but lets see your attention span outside of the video game realm.

On that note I will stop before this becomes a full fledge rant posting. Time to get back to teaching the next generation how to force their opponents into bankruptcy.