Pancake Pile-Up Game Review

Pancake Pile-Up! is a great way to enjoy Pancake Day this year (and it's completely calorie free!) 

It is a fun relay race game where you stack 'em high and serve 'em up according to the illustrations on the order cards.  Using their spatulas, little ones race to find the right pancakes in the right order and stack them on the paper plate topped with a pat of butter, to win the game.

We were sent the game to try out together.  I loved the pancakes which are soft to touch and decorated with strawberries, bananas, choc chips and blueberries.  They sit well on the spatulas ready to race.  The game comes with order cards and the idea is for the players to collect the pancakes in order to make up the required stack as quickly as possible. The bottom of the box doubles up as a griddle for the pancakes throughout the game, which is a nice touch. It's fast, it's fun and can be played with two players or teams.

This is a game of speed, co-ordination, concentration and sequencing.  It enhances memory skills and children can practice ordering.  Children learn to pay attention and take turns if they play in teams.  Balance and hand-eye co-ordination is enhanced and gross motor skills are developed.  Kids are up and active as they race to complete the order in this physical game.  It is a great activity for rainy days or for when Freddy has friends round to play.

Freddy loved playing the relay race with his sisters, but he also loved using the game for role play.  He enjoyed serving us up stacks of pancakes matching the orders to the cards.  We talked about all the different flavours of pancakes available and he practiced his counting skills as he served up our pancakes. So the play value of this game goes way beyond the rules!

The game is suitable for children aged 4 and up.  Freddy is 4 and it was perfect for him. It really is a lovely game which doubles up as a short order chef play set!

Pancake Pile-Up! can be purchased online from Learning Resources priced at £14.95 + VAT.

The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game

I was given the opportunity to review The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game, a game of strategy where players help the squirrel fill his tree stump with coloured acorns.  I absolutely love the cute design of this game with its muted colours and the integral tree-shaped box and board.  

The game itself is easy to play. Players spin the spinner that directs them to pick up a coloured acorn using the very sweet little squirrel with squeezey paws.  The one to fill their tree stump with a full set of coloured acorns is the winner.  With the option to steal their opponents' acorns the game can get quite exciting!

Freddy enjoyed playing this game with his sisters.  It is nice to have a game with straightforward, easily understandable rules that is still competitive and a lot of fun to play.

The game develops colour matching, strategic thinking, hand-eye co-ordination and fine motor skills.  It is for 2-4 players ages 3 and over.

This really is a lovely game for pre-schoolers featuring a lovely woodland theme.  The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game is available to buy from Learning Resources UK for £19.95 (excl VAT).

You can win your own copy of the game by visiting Learning Resources UK Facebook page and entering their competition before April 30th 2013.

Shake It Up with Magic Moves

Young children love playing pretend games and I'll often find Freddy pretending he is a dinosaur, a lion or a dog in the throes of some imaginary game he is playing!  They also love to move about: dancing, crawling, wriggling and jumping.  Magic Moves is an electronic light-up wand that combines these two activities to provide a toy that encourages exercise, creativity and listening skills.

With 90 fun creative movements and 26 musical tunes, the Magic Moves wand gets little ones up and moving as they follow the spoken commands and pretend to be an assortment of animals and objects and move around and interact  in special ways.  Being a wand, children can imagine themselves being magically transformed into a hopping frog or a stomping dinosaur as they enjoy this high energy, creatively expressive game.  To add to the magic, the wand has a light up bulb on both ends which play twenty-six different colourful, twinkling light shows.

I have been sent a Magic Moves wand for Freddy to try out.  The wand is easy for a little one to operate with a play button and a repeat button as controls.  Pressing play gives the child one of 90 different commands along with its music and light show.  Pressing repeat allows the child to hear the last command again.  Surprise commands enliven the game as children are told to Freeze, March or Dance along to one of three different style tunes (in Techno, Afro-Pop and Latin Salsa styles).  When the command is heard, children can imagine that they are a bouncing kangaroo or a spinning top and move around the room whilst the music plays.  It is a great way for them to get up and get active, whilst having some fun structure to their play.

Freddy, assisted by 10 year old big sister Kizzy really enjoyed playing with the Magic Moves wand and embarked on a session which entertained them (and me!)  The wand engages them in a play session that uses their imagination, exercises their bodies and encourages creative performance.  The lights, sounds and special commands add a real element of fun to playtime. It enhances listening skills, direction following, develops gross motor skills and also teaches some great vocabulary with verbs such as swooping, stomping and soaring allowing children to explore language and come up with their own ideas for movements. Freddy absolutely loves it.

The Magic Moves is an excellent educational resource for home or at school or nursery for children aged 3-7.  I think it is excellent and am really impressed with how engaged Freddy is when he plays with it.  It is also nice to have older kids and parents joining in, which is something little ones really enjoy.

The Magic Moves electronic wand can be bought from Learning Resources for £17.94 (VAT incl.)

Answer Buzzers That Make Quizzes Fun!

I love a good family quiz, but it can all get a bit chaotic with everyone shouting out their answers at the same time.  It's hard to tell who to award the points to.  Well, my annual festive family quiz problem is now solved because of this set of Answer Buzzers from Learning Resources UK.

The four colourful buzzers each have a different sound, a honking horn, a doorbell, a boxing bell and a boing.  You can easily distinguish the sounds, so you know which player buzzed in first to answer the question.  They elevate a family quiz into a gameshow adding excitement and fun to the proceedings!

Each requires 2 x AAA batteries.

Children aged 3 and over will enjoy using the buzzers as part of a quiz and even adults will enjoy the competitive edge of using buzzers in trivia quizzes.  It adds to the tension and excitement of the game.  

I look forward to adapting some of our usual family games using the buzzers.  We have lots of trivia books and question cards from old board games that we use to play multi-generational quiz games, especially at Christmas.  Teaming up the oldest with the youngest in teams gives a good cross-section of knowledge.  Adding the buzzers will bring an extra dimension...that of speed of the buzzer to the game.  Just like on TV!

They sell for £14.95 + VAT on the Learning Resources UK website.