“Making friends and uniting communities one ‘Minute-to-Win-It’ game at at time.”

Good day gamers,

I hope you are all doing well. I am doing well. I hope some helpers I had at a recent event are doing well too.

As most of you know, I’m known as the local ‘Board Game Guy’ or Game Master Dave as my preferred moniker. So, when a local store got a request to entertain 70+ 3rd graders for 90+ minutes, they asked me and I was thrilled to participate.

Here was my plan, and it worked, at least partially.

• Ten Minute-to-Win-It games at ten stations. (We learned that we couldn’t use Oreo cookies, so we had to eliminate three games.)
• Ten or more age appropriate board games set up at ten or more stations for kids to explore and learn at their leisure.
• Six volunteers running around directing the kids to on how to play the ‘MinWin’ games, helping to set up the MinWin games (cups, ping pong balls, etc.) and helping to teach the board games.
• A microphone for running the clock and making announcements.
• Hoping for parental help in corralling the kids, reading the MinWin instructions for each game that was printed and placed at each station, and for keeping kids interested in the games.

I knew that this was going to be chaotic and potentially stressful. I knew the attention span of 3rd graders would fade quickly. I knew that we probably needed two to three more helpers.

Here is what happened.

• Set up was smooth and relatively seamless with the help of the great helpers.
• With a suggestion from Ginger and another helper, Ginger set up in the cafeteria across the hall for some quieter games like Quoridor and Bellz, so that kids that felt a little apprehensive about playing the competitive MinWin games or the other games, could quietly sit down. This was a success and we will probably include some variation of this in the future.
• The kids rushed in, we introduced some games, and away we went!
• Announcements were made, parents were encouraged to join and learn some games, but only about three parents did help out of 30+ parents.
• The helpers spent most of the time setting up cups and chasing down ping pong balls.
• I spent a lot of time corralling the kids that were tossing the ping pong balls across the room.
• I taught seven or eight board games to kids. Ginger got a chance to teach a bunch of kids in the other room.
• One of my helpers actually taught several board games as well.
• A parent did help teach Apples to Apples Jr. and another taught Uno.
• Quoridor and Happy Salmon were big successes.
• There was an unplanned contest to stack the biggest stack of cups and a father helped out to put the final cup on top of the pyramid. When it fell, there was applause and a scramble to pick up all the cups.
• Clean up was fantastic with everyone pitching in, even some parents and kids.
• We handed out flyers for The Long Island Tabletop Gaming Expo in March.
• The leader of the PTA said it was great, the kids seemed to like the event a lot, the helpers were happy it was over, and I think most of the parents were appreciative for the experience even though it looked entirely chaotic.
• We were all exhausted after the event.

Was it a success? I think so, but if we do it again, we will make some adjustments.

I had previously taught about 50 80+ year olds how to play games at a retirement community with only two helpers and that was much easier than this event.

3rd graders is a tough demographic for the types of games we normally like to teach and play.

The ‘MinWin’ games are great, but they also need more direction to be done properly.

We learned a lot!!! We hope to do something like this again.

See you soon!

• Game Master Dave