Mad Libs the card game

I bought Mad Libs, the card game version, a long time ago as a possible "date night" idea for my husband and I. (You know, the kind of "date" where you put the kids to bed early and just talk or goof off for an hour or two before you finally crash from exhaustion.)

Well, in our church we have a family event that occurs (mostly) every Monday night called Family Home Evening. When the kids were younger, I planned most of the activities and often that meant coloring something. Now that the kids are older we've been using games more often, so our activities have been more like a game night kind of thing. The favorite -- and easiest to set up, play, regulate, and dismantle -- is a memory/matching game that, unlike the trademarked game put out by a popular manufacturer, uses photographs. But there's only so many times we can play that game before the kids and the parents want something more. So, we tried Mad Libs last Monday night.

Since most of our kids are either early readers or don't read at all, the large words in the deck were a little intimidating. However, our two readers (Sarah and Becky) loved the challenge, and the others thought the cards were very pretty and loved to just hold them.

About that, the cards are color-coded so that grammar can easily become a matter of finding the right color pattern. Blue noun cards are preceded by orange adjective cards and green verb cards come after the blue cards unless you're asking a question, etc., etc., etc. I can easily see this turning into a great way to have fun with grammar this school year. However, "true" play will be next to impossible until the kids are older and/or acquire longer attention spans. Last night, for the sake of speed, we allowed trading so that people with five nouns could get a verb or two instead of taking several rounds to get the card they needed.

Point? It's a fun game and I highly recommend it, especially if you have older kids (7 and up) who already have a decent grasp of grammar basics.