cranium cariboo…

Hey, y’all. Sorry so silent for awhile. We’ve been vacationing in the mountains, and I’m still catching back up with regular life…

While we were there, we pulled out this game to play with Seth. I got it for $1 at a great thrift store I know near the beach where all the people who own fancy houses take the barely used board games that their children have outgrown. Ahem.

Anyway, I really, really liked it. It’s a wonderful learning game for a preschooler. It tests a variety of knowledge skills in one game in a way that was engaging for Seth, and that is hard for me to find in a game. The board is a series of squares that flip open to reveal compartments when your preschooler inserts a large plastic key in the locks above them.

You can play beginner or advanced. The cards on the squares have words, shapes, and colors on them. You draw a card, and the child has to match the number, color, or shape on the card to one on one of the squares. Seth really got into it. He could pick out a letter C at the beginning of a word or count that there were 3 triangles on one card. He loved opening the square with the key if he was right.

Some of the squares have rubber balls in them. The child takes them out and puts them down a chute. Once he finds all 6 balls and puts them down the chute, a little treasure chest opens.

It was easy for me to see that he had the number 1 down, but 2 and 3 were tougher for him. He correctly identified B and C every time, but not A. I learned a lot about where he is right now from this game, and he improved at recognizing his letters and numbers every time we played.

It looks like this game might not be made anymore, and that makes it kind of expensive on Amazon. But if you see if used somewhere, snap it up. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed…

Any great toddler games out there that you love? Do tell….