Tag: Think Fun

  • Review of ThinkFun’s Roll & Play Toddler Game

    Review of ThinkFun’s Roll & Play Toddler Game

    This post originally appeared on The HSBA Post on September 14, 2012.

    How does a kid go from from having the attention span of a distracted gnat to an active game player? Baby steps!

    ThinkFun has created Roll & Play, a “my first game” to start your little one out to becoming a regular part of family game night.

    Roll the die!

    The die in the Roll & Play game is a large plush cube. Each side is a different color. Players roll the die and then draw a card of the same color.

    This seems lame to older kids and grownups. But consider what you have to know in order for the die rolling to work.

    When the die stops, there are five sides showing and one hidden. You have to know that you’re focus is on the side that is face up. Rolling the big die teaches little ones that the top of the die is the indicator – not one of the sides facing him or her.

    Read the card!

    Each card has an activity on it. The pictures are sufficient for little ones to know what to do.

    When they “read” the card, they get to do the activity. To keep them engaged, you can have them read the cards to the other players.

    And then they get to pass the turn to the next person – another important game playing skill.

    Play, do, and change the rules at will!

    When you play Roll & Play, you’ll be hopping around, dancing, making animal noises, and having a great time. And if you want, you can adjust the rules to fit your little one.

    We started out by skipping some of the cards. They just weren’t as engaging as the others. We’ll work around to getting to all of them.

    Your turn!

    How have you integrated your little ones into game play? Would your toddler do well with ThinkFun’s Roll & Play?

    Share your thoughts in the comments and tweet this out!

    P.S. I got the Roll & Play game for free on accident. ThinkFun meant to send me another game and accidentally shipped this one. I refused to return it, promising instead to enjoy it and write about it.

  • Rush Hour Traffic Jam Game

    Rush Hour Traffic Jam Game

    Some amazing math found in the @ThinkFun game of Rush Hour! MathFour.com

    My sister-in-law showed me the Rush Hour Traffic Jam Game by Think Fun this weekend. She “assigned” one of the harder cards in the deck to me (sometimes it sucks to be known as the math mom) and assured me that I could do it.

    The Set-up

    You set up the 6×6 game board with the plastic vehicles just like the game card shows. Here’s where the math starts.

    The skills children develop doing this support graphing on the Cartesian coordinate plane later on.

    Even if your child isn’t ready for the actual game play, this step supports them in math!

    The Goal

    Allow the ice cream truck to “escape” the maze.

    In order to do this, you are allowed to slide any of the cars forward or back. They can’t crash into other cars to push them out of the way. And you can’t lift any of them off the game board.

    A more challenging goal is to also do this in the minimum amount of moves possible.

    The Strategy

    Everyone has their own plan. My nephew likes to scooch the cars around until he stumbles upon an answer. I decided to pick up the cars and move them to the most unique solution to see what the end result should look like.

    The Math

    You’ve the coordinate plane. You have logic. And you have strategy. But you have someone much more amazing here.

    The beauty of the game is the way it simulates mathematical research and discovery.

    • Everyone has their own style.
    • Everyone has their own solution.
    • If you follow the rules and “win” then you’ve done it right, regardless of how someone else did it.
    • There are many levels of success – and the player determines which level he or she is shooting for.
    • Given the board and the colorful cars, you can create your own game.

    Wanna play?

    The next time you’re tutoring or teaching math, consider treating it like the Rush Hour game. Give it to your child then back off. Refrain from telling or showing. Let him or her play.

    You’ll be amazed at what you see.

    Let us know in the comments and don’t forget to tweet this out.

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