The art of play

I am incredibly pleased to report that I still know how to play with five-year olds.

I'm pretty good at playing with kids, I think, but I typically play games or tell stories or am playing with 3 and unders, which is a different kind of play all together. (It usually requires being able to do the same thing over and over for long periods of time).

Yesterday, though, I had the chance to play with my 5 year old niece and 9 year old autistic nephew. For my nephew, my brother invented slide bowling, so mostly our play involved setting up the pins and handing him the balls and cheering him on. (By the way, slide bowling is awesome and the $8 bowling set was worth every penny, even if I were to never use it again).

With my niece, we played. It started out with Twilight Sparkle (one of the My Little Pony crowd) and we had to find the bezel treasure. (I don't know what exactly this looks like, except pizza-ish somehow?) We found/drew the treasure map, and the treasure was hidden by the mountain flowers. So we found the mountain, and the mountain flowers, and sure enough, the bezel treasure was there. We got the treasure, but then the monsters chased us, so we had to make it to the Leaf Tree. When the monsters got there, they turned into fairies. Turns out the mean witch had turned them into monsters, but the Leaf Tree undid the spell.

Then we had to stop the mean witch, of course. First we had to find the gold medallion and the special butterfly. Then we had to go to the fairy tree and get a little fairy to help us. And then we had to find the witch, which was tricky. Turns out she was at the mountain the whole time. When we got to the mountain, the butterfly and the fairy caught the witch. Then we threw the medallion at her and cast a spell with our wands (I believe the spell was enchanticus simpaticus. In case you ever need it). And the witch turned into a good witch, the mountain became Lovely Mountain again, and the mountain flowers came back (not sure at what point they went away, but you know how these things go).

So yeah. Pretty much saved the world. You're welcome.