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GAMES, GAMES, GAMES!
Safari Rush Hour: My 9-yr.-old daughter could hardly put this game down! This is one of Binary Arts's newest Rush Hour games and it's absolutely beautiful. You have a jeep, a swamp or two, and several animals - rhinos, elephants, zebras, deer, etc. - all made of plastic, and all able to slide on grooves on a square grid. The goal is to get your jeep past the animals and through the exit on one side of the square. The trick is that your jeep and the swamps can move forward & back & sideways, but the animals can be moved only forward & backward. The game comes with a pack of cards. Each card gives you a different set-up from which to start the puzzle. It's lots of fun! Binary Arts now has a Jr. Rush Hour for ages 6-8
available, too.
QUIDDLER card game by www.setgame.com:
Not only are these cards beautiful with their elegant gothic letters, but this rolicking game can be played in a much shorter time period than Scrabble. It's sort-of a cross between Scrabble and Rummy. The game is played in 8 rounds. The players get 3 cards in the first round and one additional card in each successive round. The remaining cards are placed in the middle of the table with a discard pile established. Each player takes a turn drawing a card & discarding another one until someone manages to make words out of all of the cards in his hand. At that point, everyone else gets to select one more card each (and discard one) before the score has to be tallied. Each card has points on it, so keeping score is a cinch. And the person who has the longest card gets an extra 10 points, as does the person with the most words in his hand. Great for building your children's math and spelling skills! It's labelled for ages 8 & up. I played Quiddler with the other 9-yr.-olds in my daughter's class at school and it was a huge hit.
Lego Alpha Team software: My 6-yr.-old son could hardly leave this game alone! The object, in short, is to use your one guy to save the other guys on his team & then defeat the bad guy. To do this, you have to select the correct path out of a few choices and then place your tools (directional tile, trampolines, bombs to wipe out walls in your way, see-saws, laser beams, etc.) in the correct place to enable your good guy to travel the path & hit the button to take you to the next level (where you get more tools and the challenge comes harder). If you don't do this correctly, you might fall into shark-infested water or hot lava! You can look at the board from an aerial view or through your hero's eyes. It's loads of fun and the bad guy taunts you so badly that you're just aching to defeat him by the end of the game!
Max and the Haunted House (Tivola Software): Lots of fun for the little ones. The object of the game is to find a bunch of yellow socks with holes in them. Your little ghost friend in the castle has gotten locked in a room and he is too weak (from hunger) to pass through the door. So you must find him his favorite food - yellow socks with holes. They're hidden all over the castle and you run into some funny things during your search. My 6-yr.-old son *and* my 9-yr.-old daughter and I had a fun time finding the socks and exploring all of the castle rooms, although I think the game would be too easy for my 9-yr.-old (most appropriate, I think< for age 4-6). There are even some secret passageways in the castle!
