The Mind
In our first recommendation use your mind powers to become ONE!
Never heard of The Mind?
We are currently in a golden age of board games. If you take a look at the list of games on the Board Game Geek website you’ll find over 130,000 board games listed. In 2021, they estimate 4,000 new board games were released. 🤯
So when Chi and Zac recommend games, unless you are following the hobby very very closely, there is a good chance you won’t have heard of them. This is a key reason why there are many amazing board games available that people can play with their kids, however, they can overlook them as it is totally overwhelming to know where to start. If you’re fairly new to board games, it is understandable that it is just easier to reach for something familiar, like Monopoly, Uno or Snakes & Ladders.
But hear us out! Game & Learn is here to help!
Game & Learn’s mission is pretty straight forward, we want to help you find excellent board games that will help your kids learn important life skills through play. We are going to talk about teamwork, communication, decision making, prioritising, losing gracefully, and many more.
For our first official newsletter, we are going to start by something very special. It is small, cheap, simple, and totally different to any traditional game you might have played before. Yet, there is some awesome magic here that will help you teach teamwork, communication and cooperation.
It’s called… The Mind. 🧠
Overview
Age: 8+ years
Skill level
Teamwork: 8+ years
Communication (Verbal): 8+ years
Problem Solving: 10+ years
Players: 2-4
Duration: ~ 20 min
First off, this is a cooperative board game. So you and your kids are going to be working together to try and achieve a shared goal.
This makes it quite different from the many competitive board games that you may have played in the past (e.g., Monopoly where there is one winner… and often many frustrated, tired and bankrupt losers).
Team-based games are great. They can be used to help teach teamwork based-skills, like communication and cooperation.
So how does the game work?
The game comes with a deck of 100 cards with the numbers 1-100 on them.
This deck is shuffled and then each player receives one random card which only they can look at.
Then, without speaking, sharing information or indicating what number you have, players play their card one at a time whenever they feel like it, into the centre of the table.
The goal is to try and play the cards in ascending order from lowest to highest. (basically whoever believes they have the lowest card currently available, plays it).
If someone plays a card which isn’t the lowest card then your team loses a life.
If everyone manages to play their cards and the team still has lives left, then the team moves on to level 2.
For level 2 you deal 2 cards to each person, for level 3 you deal 3 cards per person, and so on, so it gets harder the higher the level you reach.
There are also a limited number of “throwing stars” which you can use to allow every team member to discard their lowest card.
The game continues until players reach a certain goal level for their team size or all the team’s lives are lost.
And that’s basically the game! Simple, but really fun.
Please note that there are potentially many, many strategies to help your team get in sync, some could be easier or work better for you than others. When you have “figured it out”, please don’t spoil it for new players. We actually find it really fun to play with new players, and observe their process to find their solution. Surely you would like others to experience the magic for themselves too. 😁
Where to get it
The Mind can be found in most physical and online board game stores for ~AU$25.
We recommend buying it in-person or online from your local board game store.
If you do want to buy online you can use the button below from Amazon (full disclosure, it’s an affiliate link, so we make a tiny cut if you use the link).
Note that when buying The Mind be careful as there are two versions of the game available, The Mind and The Mind Extreme. The Mind Extreme is a sequel to The Mind and provides a different and more challenging experience. We recommend starting with the original The Mind first.
How to use this game
Learn the game
It always helps when one person knows how to play the game, so if it’s the first time that you’re playing with your children, students, friends or colleagues then make sure you have learnt the game first.
With only two pages of instructions, the game doesn’t take too long to learn.
Reading instructions can be tedious so we also recommend watching the How To Play video from the excellent YouTube channel Watch It Played.
Tell the story
There’s not much of a backstory to The Mind but you can set the scene for your kids by explaining that you’re all going to try and connect to each other and read each other’s minds. Tell them it will take patience and a little bit of practice, but see if you can get there in the end!
Here is a script we prepare for you: Alright kids, we are going to play this awesome little game. We will need to focus, and be in tune with each other. It is not going to be easy, but that just makes our eventual victory that much sweeter! We will fail! But we will learn from our mistakes as a team. Are you ready for a challenge? Let’s play The Mind!
Learning Points
Why is The Mind great for teaching teamwork to your kids?
First up, it allows you and your kids to work on a puzzle together.
Often adults are in a more expert/authority role in everyday life with children: we teach them how to read, cook, take the bus to school, we KNOW better and more.
However, in a game like The Mind, it creates a space for parents to work WITH the children on the same level and at the same puzzle, which creates a different dynamic in the parental relationship. You face the same challenge together, you succeed together, and you fail together. It teaches children that it is ok to not know everything, make some mistakes, and get better at solving problems.
A key learning from The Mind is how to try different ideas and find one that works the best for your team.
When it comes to talking through solutions with your children, here are a few suggestions to facilitate discussion:
“This is difficult! How do you think we could work around it?”
Validate the challenge, allow children to be creative, throw out ideas and brainstorm new approaches
“I like the sound of that idea… what if this and that happens?”
Praise your child for giving it a go and at the same time encourage discussion around planning potential issues and problem solving them. Fine-tuning a plan is a very important skill in teamwork.
“That sounds like a good idea, shall we try it?”
Sometimes even when you KNOW it is a bad idea, you can still encourage children to give it a go. This way you are providing a safe space for children to make mistakes, and learn from them with your guidance.
After a failed attempt: “Oh wow that was tough… but I really liked your [insert children’s attempt/idea/behaviour] though! Why do you think it didn’t work? Should we try again?”
Acknowledge that failing is tough, but there are lessons to be learnt. You can review the failure with the child and do better next time.
Pro tips to game and learn
Teach the game incrementally
Often when teaching this game we have introduced new mechanics over time. So if you’re playing with a number of new people, you can ignore the throwing stars in the first game (or the first round) to make it easier to learn and quicker to start playing.
If you’ve mastered the game, you can make the game harder by playing all the cards facedown into a pile in the middle and then only revealing if you got a card in the correct order once everyone has played their cards (you lose a life for every incorrect card though so be careful, this is a difficult challenge!).
Go easy on the first few rounds
It’s tempting to make sure everyone is following the rule of not speaking or indicating cards to each other straight away. But we find that this can be difficult to follow initially. So go easy on the first few rounds and then once the game is more familiar you can start to enforce this rule.
Your concentration please
One thing The Mind encourages is a concentration phase that should be undertaken before beginning each level (or whenever players feel like they need it). It involves all players putting their hands face down on the table and taking a moment to connect with each other. It may feel weird and silly the first time you do it but it works really well to bring everyone back to the present and concentrate on the game.
5 players is totally fine
Although the box says 2-4 players, you can add a fifth player easily (it just gets harder much quicker!).
Great for travel and loud places
We’ve found that this game is great for travel (as it’s a small deck of cards) and because it doesn’t need any verbal communication you can play it in places that are quite noisy.
In a classroom (or corporate) setting
You can also take this game to work or school if you’re teacher - it works great for young and old people alike. If you’re running it with a large group of people divide your students or colleagues into groups of 4 and give each group a copy of The Mind. Set a timer (e.g., 20 min) and challenge groups to see what level they can get to. If they lose and still have time remaining then they can try again.
Achievement Sheet 🏆
Want to get the most out The Mind? We’ve made an A4 achievement sheet that you can print out and use for replayability. We bet your kids will love it. ❤
Finally! One excellent bonus of getting The Mind is once your kids know how to play the game, the bulk of this game is played in silence… You are welcome. 😊
We hope you enjoyed this first game recommendation! Please help us out by giving us a rating and feedback below.
Otherwise, if you have any questions or any suggestions on what educational skills you’d like to teach your kids then leave a comment below.
What are you waiting for? Game and Learn with The Mind 😉