Simply Fun Game Review

Simply Fun Game Review

The kids are on summer break, and you might soon be looking for ways to entertain them while still providing an educational environment.SimplyFun provides fun, educational games for parents to play with their children. Be sure to check out all their fun games at simplyfun.com.

Pass the Rooby Roo! is played with 2-4 players ages 5+ and is designed to help children develop word association and quick thinking skills. The instructions were easy to follow and simple enough for my young children to remember. To start, letter tiles are placed in a circle. A player chooses a letter and places Rooby Roo next to the Letter Tile.To determine the category, she rolls the dice and decides if she would like to pick the Letter Tile that many spaces to the left or right. There are categories on the opposite sides of the Letter Tiles.The category is indicated using pictures, and reading is not required. Each player thinks of something in that category beginning with the chosen letter. (For example:if the child placed Rooby Roo next to the letter S, and the category is clothes, a correct response could be “socks”).

As soon as a player has an answer he shouts “Pass the Rooby Roo!” If the player is correct he gets a ruby. The game continues in this manner until someone has four rubies. My children enjoyed this game, and I felt it was excellent for helping children develop categorization skills and reinforcing beginning letter sounds. It’s fast moving so young children do not get bored waiting their turn. The only change I might recommend is adapting the shout-out rule to allow younger children more opportunities to respond, as most often the older children responded first.

Whirly’s World is a board game designed to be played with 2-6 players, ages 6 and up.The game is designed to help children identify odd and even numbers and to build early addition skills.Each child rolls two dice and moves their chosen color snail to the combined total.If a child lands on either a yellow or purple box, she must select the same colored card (purple cards are odd, and yellow cards are even) and follow the easy to read instructions. If a child lands on a green “W” she must say a word beginning with the letter W to receive a token.

In addition to adding the dice and counting spaces, players are also asked at times to count objects on the game board.Throughout the game each player earns Whirly Tokens. Unfortunately, on more than one occasion, my children ran out of Whirly Tokens too early. My children really got into this game.For the older children it provided reinforcement for quick recall of addition facts. For the younger children, it provided a meaningful activity that encouraged them to begin to add numbers and reinforced their one-to-one correspondence skills. Fun family game!

Bethany is a Group Care Specialist at MOPS International. She is a wife and mother of three sons, ages 11, 9 and 7 and three daughters (five-year-old triplets).