What do you get when you combine wooden shapes with word cards with NO TALKING allowed? A super fun creative and imaginative game that helps kids develop a visual vocabulary and life skills. Asymbol takes geometric forms and shapes and mashes them up with imagination to help kids to work on complex pattern challenges. There … Read more
As a native Oregonian, it took me a while to learn to appreciate desert beauty. The colors of this game were the first thing I came to love about the desert – the reds and oranges and the sunsets!!! The desert truly is a “place of vast beauty: technicolor sunsets, deep canyons, trickling tributaries, and … Read more
If you live in a cold-winter place, Blue Lagoon is the perfect game to bring back memories of sand and sunshine. It’s an area control/set collection game where players try to collect resources and spread their settlements and villages as far and wide as possible. Game components include settler discs and village huts in four … Read more
If you’re looking for a strategy game, this one has it all! Adventure, mysticism, companionship, herbs, swords, battles…this is s a great beginning strategy game for young board game players. It’s can also be fairly complex with three different Adventure Scenarios to satisfy even the most seasoned board gamer! Each scenario indicates how points are … Read more
Kids LOVE asking questions. I think they love being asked questions even more though, especially if it’s a fun and silly question, definitely not, “Would you like to do the dishes or sweep the floor?” Obviously . . :) But “Which would you miss more if it ceased to exist? A: The color pink or … Read more
We’ve been pulling out all the games that have any sort of connection at all to ROCKS, our science topic for the month. We’re finding there are a lot of games that have rock elements to them, like My First Castle Panic! (We’re also studying England, Ireland, and Scotland, so this is the perfect game … Read more
We love exploration/tile placement games and Karuba has fun illustrations, great mechanisms, and is a really fun family game! Players set up the game by taking turns placing one explorer and one temple at least 3 spaces apart on the board. Explorers go along the beach (sandy edges) and temples go in the jungle (green … Read more
Mythology and fairy tales are a huge part of our homeschooling curriculum. I always have my kids reading from a book of myths or fairy tales – the stories and heroes of old are so classic and provide modern readers with background and context with which to understand and enjoy all stories more deeply. Good … Read more
Codenames has a nice variety of games for word lovers. The regular version is classic and fantastic, and we also love the pictures version! The picture format gives younger kids and non or struggling readers a fighting chance against older opponents and can help them develop language skills in a way that might be more … Read more
I don’t know if it’s because I grew up in the era of the original Nintendo, but games that resemble Tetris in any way really call to me. Our whole family loves puzzles and Tetris, and Miyabi is a really fun and beautiful game with similar shape-manipulation elements. What it also has is a beautiful … Read more