What do you like about playing Mancala?

That we get to steal each other's pieces. I like that. It's a strategy game. It's not a chance game, because those can be fun too, but it's annoying when you didn't even get to have a say in getting a bad turn.

How long have you guys been playing Mancala?

Child 1: Like since the pandemic yeah.

How did you guys learn? Like who taught you? Did you guys teach yourselves?

The person right there *points to mother*, mom tought me. Like you know, it was a good thing to do. Also, I could beat everyone in this house at it.

Mother: I remember playing it in like third grade.

Child 2: You're not getting interviewed.

Both Children: Can I please have a cookie? 

Mother: You may have one cookie.

Mother: But yeah, and I think it was during pandemic, so you were five turning six just about when that all happened and it was like weird, and it was that it was in 2021,. There was like six weeks of smoke and we were inside like we are finding out what we can do inside for many weeks at a time. So I think that's when we got the Mancala set up.

Bea, would you choose Mancala out of all the board games? Would you choose another game over this Child 1?

Child 1: I mean I probably prefer to be building the world in Minecraft.

How long would you say it took you to learn how to play a couple games?

Child 1: A couple games, mm-hmm. The rules were honestly pretty simple and, like Mom just taught us after like a bit of of playing, I was beating her easily.

 If your mom never introduced the game, do you think you would have learned it on your own because of like its appearance?

Child 1: I don't know. Um, so yeah, although missing um like half the beads, sometimes I have to play like three or even two beads, so it wouldn't work as well. But like yeah, and I still learned. It's just like. This is the way I learned, so it's hard to imagine learning it another way.

Have you ever played this game like outside of home? Mm-hmm Like do you play in school? 

Child 1: In 3rd grade, they have a more complete set and I'd sometimes play there. Well, a lot of the time I'd play there, it'd be fun.

Do you think that this is a game that's popular amongst your friends in your grade?

Child 1: Not exactly, though we don't all tell each other our favorite board games all the time. I mean, I haven't really seen it in my classroom, but I have seen it at DKK (After School Program), so I think it's at least popular some of the time. So it's pretty good.

Do you think you learn other skills from Mancala?

Child 1: Well, it's sort of like you have to be very observant about what the other person is doing as well as yourself, because if you're not careful, you could be paying too much attention to stealing one of their containers and not enough about how they could steal yours as well. It's like I'm not paying attention enough to comparing the mancalas, like you could relax a bit, thinking you were winning, but you wouldn't notice that the other person actually had an advantage in having won.

As a parent, what educational value do you think this board game provides to your children?

Mother:

Different values at different ages, like when they were small, like four and five, because they had started a little younger. It's just the counting, literally just counting, and like being able to be like one, two, three, four and and sort of. It's only got like a couple rules and so, keeping those possibilities in mind, it's like it's sort of like for young kids it's's like I can do this or I can do this or I can do this. So it's sort of like seeing choices, making a choice and counting. And then for older kids there is the sort of um, the game theory. That's sort of like if I do this, but then the other person does this that might affect what I do, so what if I do this? Then they do that.

So there's very different values for the different kids. One is the counting and the following and set of instructions, and the other one is like thinking more broadly about like what, what is the other person thinking? And I mean just on the sort of more social level, because there's only a few rules and there are only sort of a limited number of actions you can take. They get fast, quickly, and that pride when they just absolutely just nail you and take all of your points like it's just, yeah, the dog is sleeping with its mouth open. It's ridiculous. That's a really good like growing thing, like that pride when she absolutely beat me without my helping her or like sort of taking it easy at all, like that's real pride. So that was a big part of it is that sense of growth which it's achievable in a pretty finite space sense of growth which it's achievable in a pretty finite space.

What do you think teaching them Mancala is good for, like their sibling connection, like how Child 1 helps Child 2?

Mother:

These two, yes, I definitely know siblings for whom that would not be true. But I think for these two Child 1's always been very nurturing and has very much taken the like I'm the big sister protector, teacher role and so that's been pretty. It was a good tool where she could teach and he could learn sometimes he doesn't want to do what you, in your attempt to be a benign dictator, want him to do, and that's okay. He's allowed to choose what he wants.

Child 2: Don't call me your student and I won't call you my professor.

Would you guys say you're more competitive or more friendly when you guys play?

Child 1:

definitely friendly, but if you didn't notice, I was occasionally tap tapping the ones he should choose, mostly because it would aggravate me if he chose the wrong choice.

Mother:

That was so easy to see. They're definitely more friendly. Their favorite games have actually been collaborative games where it's like you have to work together to achieve an objective, like Outfox, like Outfox, like Max, a little bit Lanterns, but they really I think if they were to be in outright competition, it would feel unfair because Child 1's older, older and neither of them really like that. Bea would like it for a little while, and then everyone would be unhappy after a little while, mostly because you would be very openly upset about it, and that's hard to ignore.

That tends to be more of their happy place. It's slightly more collaborative or where they're playing competitively but they're trying to like,  it’s a little bit like oh, I see the play you don't see, so I get the little win but you get the points, but I know that I saw it. Yeah, that's where they like to like it.

As a parent, would you rather have them play physical games rather than like games on iPads and TV?

Mother:

oh boy, okay, how much time do you guys have? So obviously physical games where there's hands on we have literally millennia of. This is part of how people learn to be part of we're part of a society. This has been part of it. They have a value.

I also think these kids are growing up online in a way that I didn't you guys probably did somewhat, and that you know, like the millennials and Generation Z are very much like we've always been online, and that a lot of socializing happens online. So I think there's value to like, I've seen these kids make a real connection. They have scheduled times, they get together, they do that thing. So they're playing on iPads or they're playing on computers, but it's social.

There's a place for just like. I just need some Tetris, dopamine for a little bit, and I do think that there is some value to those things, but I don't think that they teach the same skills as hands-on games. I know some families who have kids and they're like no, we're only doing, there's no online time, there's no computer time. There's no screen time. I'm like you are kind of unfitting them to be an adolescent and an adult with the generation that they're in If they have never done that before and then they're trying to catch up.

I think what I've seen with these kids is that physical games like material games. What I continually am surprised by is how simple they can be and keep the kids absolutely occupied and that they'll spin their own narratives out. So I feel like there's so much more room for that creativity. With the material games it starts simple and then they like spin up this whole thing around it. You guys certainly come up with all kinds of creative games with like a stick and some rollie polies.

How long does it take until you guys get bored of the game?

Child 2: Eh, like I don't know, three, two hours, three to six games, I'd say. I'd say sometimes like a bit more about that though.

How often do you see them play Mancala?

Mother:

Not very often, currently less during the school year, when they get home and they want to have a little screen time and there's a little bit of homework and stuff like that. Not as much Weekends when we haven't scheduled something and you guys lie around and literally say I'm so bored. Occasionally it comes out then and in the summer more.

Do you guys have any last thoughts about Mancala?

Child 1:

It's fun. That's one of the reasons. One other thing about Mancala and we've actually done this is we lost two beads once, I suspect Audra, yeah, they were shiny. She's a toddler who came over, who comes over a lot, a lot. Now she's four. Mom suspects my best friends for being the reason that we lost two of the beads, anyway, so you can replace them. You don't have to have the shiny beads from Mancala, they're just fancy. You can actually replace them with, like you know, other beads, rocks, things like that, so it's versatile. You can seriously replace them with dried seeds or literally pebbles. I mean you could literally play Mancala with raisins or pickles or pomegranate seeds, 

Child 2: Pickles?! Pickles would smell bad.