Fly Trap! Family fun while practicing your aim

15 October, 2012 By Leave a Comment

You did it, mummy! You got a fly in! – JD, 4

I love playing games with JD, especially now he’s at school. His tastes are changing and since he’s required to concentrate for 6.5 hours a day at school, it takes something a bit special to get him to concentrate at home.

Fly Trap! from Esdevium Games is the perfect combination of silly and challenging. A large plant, reminiscent of Audrey II with braces, rotates in its pot at varying speeds, opening and closing its mouth. The players, armed with a set of colour coded bugs must use the simple launch devices to ‘feed’ the ravenous plant.

But while two players are working hard to shoot the most flies into the mouth of the Fly Trap, another two players are working against them, pushing on pumps to close the mouth and stop them from scoring.

Suitable for 2-4 players aged 4+, it’s a fun little game and great for practicing aim and coordination skills. The flies are rounded and the launch pads never launch the bugs very high, so I’d say there’s little danger of injury to eyes as long as common sense is used.

The only downside with any game of this type is all the little pieces are so easy to lose, so you do need to remember to put everything back in the box when you’re finished.

At £19.99, Fly Trap! is a fun, family game that everyone can enjoy.

Disclosure: we were sent Fly Trap! free of charge for review. No payment was received for this post. All posts are 100% honest.

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Scrabble Junior, Chameleon Crunch and Roboto Uno (a Netmums review)

6 October, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Run around the room backwards – JD, 4

This week, Netmums arranged for us to road test three games from Mattel: Scrabble Junior, Roboto Uno and Chameleon Crunch. Here’s what we made of them.

Scrabble Junior

With JD just beginning to solidify his understanding of phonemes / graphemes and enjoy independent reading for the first time, Scrabble Junior has proved to be right up his street.

My mum visited this weekend so the five of us (daddy, JD, grandma, me and Miss J on my knee) sat down and played on the simplest side of the board, which involves taking it in turns to put two tiles on the board inline with preset words. A player receives a token each time they are the one to complete a word.

JD really enjoyed playing, as did we, and it’s easy to see how he’ll be able to introduce some rudimentary strategic thinking as he becomes familiar with the words.

In time, we’ll be able to flip the board over and make use of the side aimed at children aged 7+, which is essentially a simplified version of the adult Scrabble game, meaning Scrabble Junior will have a long, happy life in this house.

All in all, I’d say it’s a great game, well worth adding to the family Christmas list with its reasonable price tag of £21.99.

Uno Roboto

This is the classic Uno card game (similar to ‘crazy eights’) but with a key difference: a cute little robot quiz master who speaks and interacts as the game is played. Players can record their names and a ‘house rule’ (JD seems keen that only ‘run around the room backwards’ will do) and Roboto will interject at random with little rules and requests that must be followed. He has a cute voice and comical sound effects that add to the fun and the game actively encourages matching, number and colour recognition skills.

As the game is aimed at children aged 7+ and JD is not quite 5, he struggled a little with the rules at first but soon got the hang of it and very much enjoyed interacting with the robot. The only slight issue is that we’re a noisy lot in this house and found that we needed to use the highest volume setting and the repeat button regularly to catch what the robot is saying.

Roboto Uno is suitable for 2-6 players and priced at £24.99.

Chameleon Crunch

Chameleon Crunch caused quite a lot of excitement when it arrived in our home. Once switched on, the chameleon crawls around the room, opening and shutting its mouth in a way that resulted in shrieks of laughter from both children as we attempted to throw plastic bugs into his mouth. Yet more shrieks occurred when the little critter burped them all out!

Up to four players can join in, chucking in bugs until the chameleon is full, at which point he stops and the winner is the person with the most bugs in his mouth.

Amongst all the excitement, it was great to see JD practicing his aim and coordination skills while reinforcing his understanding of colours, counting, and matching.

Priced at £19.99, Chameleon Crunch would make a great toy to fill up long rainy days and school holidays – you’ll just need a reasonably large room to play in as he needs space to circle around.

This is a Netmum’s sponsored review. To find out more click the button:

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Are puzzle games a career investment?

19 September, 2012 By 2 Comments

The brain is much like a muscle – ‘use it or lose it’ – and in the case of puzzling, the more you do it, the more you create a positive mental domino effect – Behavioural psychologist Donna Dawson

No, I haven’t gone mad. I’ve been reading a survey which states that Brits who regularly play puzzles, crosswords and brain teasers not only earn more but hold down more senior positions at work.

Could this be true? Adult puzzle brand Wasgij reckon so. In fact, if the study they commissioned is to be believed, then the average income of Brits who do puzzles is £32,073 while non-puzzlers take home 7% less with an average salary of £29,923.

So does that mean being a parent could actually make you smarter? Have all those hours spent helping the kids with puzzles actually boosted our earning potential? Could kids be as much a financial boost as a financial drain? Probably not. But it’s a nice thought, eh?

When Jumbo Games sent us a 2-in-1 Thundercats puzzle recently, I held off reviewing it, thinking, “Hmm, how much can I say about a jigsaw other than that JD likes it and the pictures are cool?” – who’d have thought we actually spent the summer furthering our job prospects?

Disclosure: No payment was received for this post. Jumbo Games sent us a jigsaw to review and later sent us this survey. All posts are 100% honest.

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Is it your iPad or the family iPad? (Sponsored Video)

10 September, 2012 By 6 Comments

Can I play of the iPad after breakfast/lunch/tea please, mummy? – JD, 4

When I bought our iPad, I reasoned that I needed it for work. At the time I was commuting between Lincoln and London at least twice a week, occasionally staying in hotels and regularly spending hours tubing it across London to meetings. Owning an iPad seemed like a shrewd business move. And hey, we might also be able to find the odd educational app for the kids.

As it turns out, while I do use it for work, it’s mostly used as a family tool; the social, educational and gaming applications far outweighing those needed for business. Has it been the same for you?

It’s the large touch screen, of course, that makes it such an appealing toy for all ages. At four years old, JD enjoys the educational apps the most; tracing letters with his fingers, sorting shapes or practicing his maths with visual cues. Even Miss J, now 10.5 months old, is able to interact with the more elementary apps.

Launching this month, Mattel Apptivity is interesting because it allows little gamers to use real-world toys to interact with iPad games. You buy from a choice of packs, including favourites like Hot Wheels, Batman, and Fruit Ninja, download a free app and then play by putting the toys on the surface of an iPad.

Sound like fun? Here’s how it works:

What are your favourite family apps?

Disclosure: This video has been sponsored by Mattel but all thoughts are my own.

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At what age does a child learn to lose gracefully?

18 April, 2012 By 13 Comments

I won again! – JD, 4

We reviewed a new game this week. It’s called Dobble and it’s similar to snap, in that two players take half the pack each, turn one card over each, and the first one to spot the matching symbol puts both cards on the bottom of their pack. The winner is the player left holding all the cards at the end.

It’s an enjoyable game and JD picked it up quickly. Obviously I was giving him extra time to find the pair after I’d spotted it, but after a few rounds, he was finding some faster than I was. He was jumping up and down at each mini-victory and really enjoying himself, so I decided to start winning the odd round to make things more interesting. Uh oh.

Sulk

As soon as I spotted a pair before him, he looked crestfallen. A few rounds later, when I tried it again, he proclaimed, “I don’t like this game” and despite encouraging words about the importance of taking part – and the fact that he was winning by a mile overall anyway – the next round I won saw him pick up the pack, throw it on the floor and give it a swift kick – totally uncharacteristic behaviour.

JD can play a game for hours where the goal is steady progress. Equally, the boardgames we’ve played have passed without incident, perhaps because he’s more concerned with his own counters than how he’s performing in comparison to others.

So Dobble was his first experience of clear cut competition and naturally, he struggled with it.

Do high achievers make sore losers?

I suspect it gave him a shock because its at odds with his experiences with learning thus far – he picks things up very quickly, flies through preschool numeracy/literacy challenges and when it comes to things like building Lego Hero Factory creatures, he’s streets ahead of me. I guess he just hadn’t experienced real competition before, complete with little victories and defeats.

We put Dobble aside for a few days and then returned to it. This time he was more willing to accept he wouldn’t win every round, though he still struggled when he thought his pile might actually be smaller than mine. We’ll keep playing.

Of course, he’s at the beginning of his learning journey – he doesn’t even start school until September – so I’ve no concerns, but I’d be interested to know, when did your little ones get the hang of winning and losing gracefully?

Disclosure: Esdevium Games Ltd sent us a copy of Dobble free of charge for review. All reviews and posts are 100% honest.

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