The Fun of Scrabble

Katie and Tim and I played Scrabble tonight. It was a sweet thing--we all had a great time trying to fit the words in the most advantageous spot possible. We're all a bit competitive and control freaks to boot. The greatest thing about it was that we all enjoyed each other's company; the next best thing was that they're becoming serious contenders. I'm having to get used to a new depth of competition. It's the first time I've lost that I remember...not that I have that great a memory. Katie won. Tim got almost as many points as I did.
I used to allow Tim to take twice the tiles I did in order to give him an advantage. It didn't take him long to refuse to take the extras. Then for a long time I had to help him create the words. That's becoming less frequent, too. I occasionally have to correct his spelling, but not that often any more. He's becoming more and more canny at the positioning of the words. I think Scrabble is a great game for evaluating a child's progress in word use and strategy. His progress is encouraging to me, too, since his vision has only recently been corrected to the point that reading comes more readily to him. I don't know how he came to do as well as he is, except by God's grace. His average score per turn was a bit over 13.
Katie's skills are a bit more developed. She looked in the dictionary and found a word, "kina," from Papua New Guinea. In our house, if it's in our dictionary and not an acronym, abbreviation, or proper name, you can use it. She also had more instances than the rest of us for using a letter to make two words simultaneously. She got an average score per turn of almost 17 points.
So I think we have a family trait of loving Scrabble, and we will use it for a family fun time as well as for honing our competitive skills. It's a good time. If you enjoy Scrabble, call us and come by, we'd love to have you come over to play it with us!