A few days ago, my son came to me with a simple request: he wanted a new board game. Now, our shelves are already bursting with games, so I threw out a challenge: “Why don’t we just create one?” He was a bit reluctant at first. But somehow it ignited his thoughts.
From 147 tiles to a loving world
We started exploring. Suddenly, it wasn’t just a game; it was a dinosaur escape mission. I asked him how big it should be: 100 tiles? A card game? He looked at me and said, “Let’s make it huge. 147 blocks.” For the next hour, I watched him intuitively thinking about various aspects of games — drawing on every game he’d ever played. He was using logic to set constraints, imagining the look of the board, inventing rules and “what-if” scenarios. While he didn’t know the formal terms for game design, he was doing it. He created help cards, survival rules, and tile-based traps.
We hunted for cardboard. He measured, calculated, and realized 147 tiles wouldn’t fit, so he adjusted his math to 121. He drew icons (took my help wherever he could not) and colored tiles in different colors to indicate their role. When we finally sat down as a family to play, the joy wasn’t just in the game — it was the fact that it was entirely his creation.
The return gift for his birthddy
Then came the birthday plans. When we hit the topic of return gifts, I suggested we make something by hand. We went from handmade soaps to seed trays. One morning, mid-story, he paused and said, “I want to give my friends a story written by me as a return gift.” And so it began. We spent two days just on the theme (dinosaurs again, of course!). We made a “Story Board” to map out characters, emotions, and the classic Beginning-Middle-End structure.
But the real “Aha!” moment came during the edit. He showed me his first draft, and I knew it was just the “core idea.” Instead of fixing it for him, I played the bad cop and pushed back. We read his favorite book and watched his favorite movie together, asking one question: “How would you feel if you only saw the core idea without the details?”
The lightbulb went on. He spent a few days adding detail, proofreading, and listening to his own words. Not just writing — he was quietly building so many other skills along the way.
When the outcome did not match the dreams
With many days of correcting and rewriting, we ended up at a printing shop just before his birthday. He learned about paper GSM, types of binding, and why certain glue works better for certain page counts. When the first book came out, his face dropped. The letters were too small. The pages were in the wrong order. He was devastated.
We spoke about our options. He asked if we could go talk to the printing guy again. We went back the next day, took extra care — and viola! The result was exactly what he had imagined.
Why telling these stories
I’m not imagining his future as a professional author or a board game developer. These are simply stories of possibilities hiding in everyday life. He is creating his learning through his living.
Here is another article to explore many path of possibilities