Tuesday, August 3, 2010

“Games, contests and softball part of Vail Fun Days” plus 3 more

“Games, contests and softball part of Vail Fun Days” plus 3 more

Games, contests and softball part of Vail Fun Days

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 07:08 AM PDT

Kids' games, a strongman contest, "Golf Around Vail", a slowpitch softball tournament and a performance by The King and His Court softball team are among a full slate of activities planned for Vail Fun Days scheduled for Saturday, August 7.

Following is the schedule of events:

Saturday, August 7

9 a.m. – slowpitch softball games begin

9 a.m. – car show starts

11 a.m. to 1 p.m. – lunch served (hot dogs and burgers)

11 a.m. – kids' games begin

Noon – strongman registration (3 p.m. contest start), $20 entry fee

 2 p.m. – greased pig contest

2 p.m. – "Golf Around Vail ($5 entry fee)

fire department water activities (afternoon time to be set)

3 p.m. – pool races

4 p.m. – third annual duck race (ducks can be purchased until start time for $5 each)

5 p.m. – pulled pork supper

9 p.m. – Fishheads concert ($5 admission)

Sunday, August 8

9 a.m.-1 p.m. – breakfast at the community building before the ball games

The following are comments from the readers. In no way do they represent the view of southwestiowanews.com.

Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Big bucks in online social games

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 05:37 AM PDT

The most-used function on Angela Shields's iPhone is not the phone. Or e-mail. Or the Web browser. It's a game called Words With Friends, and she taps it open more than 10 times a day, anxious about her next move.

Shields, a clinical social worker in the District, doesn't consider herself a gamer, a term that conjures images of 26-year-old men slaying aliens in their parents' basements. She is 31 and funny and has many real-world friends, yet she often catches up with them in the Scrabble-like game's chat room while pecking out 36-point words.

"Some friends and I communicate through the app more than we do through e-mail," Shields said. "It's a lot more fun than e-mail. I mean, you can kick their butt while we catch up about our lives."

More than 200 million people play social games every month, and the numbers grow by the thousands every day. "Whereas the 19th century will be remembered for the creation of the modern novel, and the 20th century was dominated by movies and images on screens, I think we can now see that games will be the dominant form of entertainment in this century," said Jon Radoff, an early Internet entrepreneur, game developer and armchair gaming historian.

If that sounds like blasphemy, consider that online games just passed e-mail as the second-most popular activity online, behind social networking, according to Nielsen. Last week, Disney paid $563.2 million to buy social game developer Playdom. Google is reportedly in talks with game companies to start a site called Google Games, having noticed that on Facebook, the fastest-growing Web site in the world, 40 percent of the company's 500 million users regularly play social games.

In olden days, games were played in the living room. Chess. Battleship. Monopoly. Then the world changed. The family nucleus dispersed, especially up and down the information superhighway. Online gaming first gained popularity with those adults-living-in-the-basement types. But now, through smartphones and Facebook, where users tend to imaginary plots of land in FarmVille or hire friends to run eateries in Restaurant City, games are mainstream again.

Many players are using games such as FarmVille and Scrabble to make new friends. Through the Words With Friends app, Shields got love-life advice from a fifty-something divorcee in Washington state. She plays about 20 games a day.

Where adults can play

The demographic profile of today's gamers cuts across genders and age groups, although middle-age women are disproportionately represented in game use on Facebook. People play at work, on their commutes, at lunch, on the couch, in their pajamas -- plowing crops, waiting on tables, building words, often in bursts lasting no longer than five minutes.

If you think the people next to you at Starbucks are taking a break from spreadsheets to look at pictures of cousins' adorable newborns on Facebook, you're probably wrong. They are probably icing friends on Mafia Wars.

"Games have always faced a sort of puritanical challenge in this country, that they are okay to play as kids but weird as adults," said Mia Consalvo, who researches games at MIT. "But play is a fundamental part of our lives. And now, with these social games, many people who weren't gamers have an outlet again to play games as adults."

That's largely because social games on Facebook and smartphones hearken back to a simpler time, when games were easy to play. Board games, card games -- who needed to read the instructions? As families spread apart and technology improved, games became, often on computers or gaming consoles, more solitary and complicated. They required users to play hour after hour. Hand-eye coordination became essential.

Today's popular pursuits are not your weird cousin's games. Now, on Facebook, Scrabble is as simple as the original 1948 game played on cardboard. The most popular game on the site, FarmVille, requires clicking around an imaginary farm to plant crops and take care of animals. In Happy Aquarium, another popular Facebook game, users feed fish and clean tanks. Millions of women throw parties together on Sorority Life. Guys can act out their Tony Soprano fantasies by capping people throughout the day in Mafia Wars.

Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Candy Land to the rescue!

Posted: 02 Aug 2010 07:07 PM PDT

Flashcards are a tough sell when sprinklers, squirt guns and swimming pools beckon.

Classic board games, on the other hand, go down like ice cream and — Psst! Don't tell! — your kids learn everything from basic math skills to strategy and spatial reasoning.

"Games are a great way for kids to extend their thinking and do different kinds of thinking than they would in school in a very positive, pro-social way," says Janine Remillard, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education. "This is a great thing to encourage."

We asked Remillard to match classic games with age-appropriate skills. Here are some of her picks:

Pre-counting skills

Ages 3 to 5: Candy Land is a tad slow for adults, but preschoolers can't get enough of this rainbow-bright board game. No numbers required so even very young children can tackle ideas about sequences (one thing comes after another) and work on matching colors and pictures.

Counting skills

Ages 5 to 12: Counting is one of the most important skills your kids can learn, and Trouble is here to help. Five-year-olds (and precocious younger siblings) love the retro dice-popper and the mad race to the finish. Sorry!, with similar thrills but a tad more strategy, is a hit with ages 6 and up. (Chutes and Ladders is another top pick in this category.) These games help kids learn that numbers correspond with values (1 equals one space, 2 equals two spaces) and do some basic addition.

Strategy

Ages 5 and up: Many kids can enjoy the higher pleasures of checkers and chess by kindergarten or first grade. Both games are more complex than counting games and great for teaching pattern recognition, thinking ahead and cause-and-effect ("If he does this, I'll do that and then he'll have to do this.") Another big favorite is Clue Jr., which encourages kids (ages 5 to 8) to use their powers of deduction to solve a mystery. Kids graduate to Clue, which is recommended for ages 9 and up.

Spatial reasoning

Ages 2 and up: Very simple puzzles help toddlers with basic geometric concepts. Connect Four is a fun, fast-moving introduction to graphing points on a grid for kids age 4 or 5 and up. (Caution: This game may be addictive for adults as well as children.) At about age 7, many kids are ready for Battleship, which encourages them to visualize shapes they can't actually see and imagine possible patterns on a grid. Another great pick in this category is Blokus (recommended for ages 7 and up).

Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Gallaher kids win Cabell County Battle of the Books

Posted: 02 Aug 2010 08:14 PM PDT

HUNTINGTON -- The elementary-age team of kids from Gallaher Library won the annual Cabell County Battle of the Books Monday night.

But everyone left with a trophy because all the children put in the time and effort to read between eight and 10 books since June.

"I'm proud of the kids," said Niza Uslan, the youth services coordinator for Cabell County Public Library. "They've really read the books."

And all the kids proved her right. The teams from Gallaher and West libraries were perfect in the book-quiz tournament. And it took two sudden-death rounds for Gallaher to claim first place.

Then, the teams from Salt Rock, Barboursville and the main libraries battled for third place. They all had only missed one question during the tournament.

"That shows the kids have read the books," Uslan said.

And if you needed any more evidence, just talk to Karey Fugate of Milton. Her 10-year-old daughter, KayDee, participated Monday. On Tuesday, Aug. 3, at 6 p.m., her older daughter, SueAnna, will take part in the middle school Battle of the Books.

"She reads as soon as her feet hit the floor," Fugate said of KayDee. "She reads at lunchtime and for an hour and a half before she goes to bed."

Fugate credits the library's summer program with improving KayDee's reading level.

"She was struggling with reading in school. She went from reading below level to above level," Fugate said.

Both kids have given up video games and riding bikes with friends to immerse themselves in books. Fugate said they even take books to the pool.

"It's better than TV by a long shot," SueAnna Fugate said.

The winning team members included:

First place, Gallaher: Hannah Daniels, Armaan Karimpour, Evelyn Meadows, Caitlin McComas, Hunter White and Caleb Wise.

Second place, West: Beth Perry, Abigail Harman, April Stinson, Sarah Dishman, Patrick Dempsey and Darien Stinson.

Third Place, Main library (Super Reading Squad): Sophie Agrawal, Isabelle Litteral, Bojena Gross, Gabriella Black, Sophia Oliashirazi and Katie Way.

Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.
Posted by at

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)