July 31, 2005 - Sunday
We played the Madagascar DVD animal trivia game tonight and Harry actually won the first of two games. He knows enough about animals to have won both, too, except that there are word questions (anagrams and speed questions) that he simply couldn't get. After all, it is a game for ages 6 and up. Aside from the marketing and the use of the characters, it really doesn't have anything to do with the Madagascar movie and it really just an animal quiz game. What's great is that it has three different player levels and each of four players can be at any of the three. There's even a "Dynamic Leveling" function, that we didn't use, that gives harder questions to a player who gets several right in a row and easier questions to a player who's gotten a few wrong. Unless I missed something, that can't be used on a per-player basic and somehow I worried about Harry getting effectively punished for doing well.

And that probably was right and the different age levels - the Scout (age 6-9), Explorer (age 10-13), and Navigator (age 14 - up) - made the competition reasonably even. Harry won the first against me and the team of mommy and Jeremy. Truth be told, the first game ended abruptly on a DVD glitch, but Harry was ahead and I declared him the winner.

Two interesting things about that: first, Harry was frustrated that he didn't actually get to win and I very much understand that, regardless of the glitch. He was disappointed when it happened and I said I understood that it was frustrating, but he still did win. He said again at bedtime that he didn't really win, perhaps testing the idea, but I just told him he did and that I was very proud of him for knowing so much about animals.

Second, I also told him how proud I was of him when I won the second game. He didn't get upset and just seemed happy. "And didn't we have fun playing?" That's something I've said before, when he got mad about not winning a card game of war. He said "yes." Progress.


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