Friday Post - Hi Ho! Cherry-O

I'm really trying to get my daughter into the boardgames ASAP.  We're pretty big board game nerds, except that my husband isn't into two player games as much.  I know it'll be a long time before the kids can join in on anything by Rio Grande, so I have to start working on them early.

This game is pretty great.  I don't mind playing it, either.  I mean, it's mind numbingly simple and boring, but it's hilariously cute to watch an excited 2 year old go through the motions of playing.  It took her two days to figure out that she has to spin the spinner fast, do what it tells her to do, and then wait for other people to take their turn before she can spin again.  Maybe, if we're lucky, she'll make enough progress that we can start learning to play chutes and ladders.

Our copy was second hand, so the art isn't as offensive as the modern version (the new version has different coloured trees with corresponding cherries, but really, who cares).  The game play is pretty simple; you spin the arrow and count cherries as you move them from your tree to the barrel.  Sometimes you have to move cherries back to the tree, though.  My daughter hates doing that and will often spin multiple times and even just point the arrow to the number she desires. 

After three days of playing the game, she now just moves the cherries wherever, changes the barrels around, tells us what we're allowed to do, and abandons the game to play with the pieces in an arbitrary fashion.  She's displayed a few times that she can play the game properly following the rules, so whatever.  She'll start playing properly again by the time she's three.