Games and Puzzles

Four rather worried-looking wooden eggs and matching wooden spoons for a cleaner, safer egg-and-spoon race.

Eggs are 6 x 4.5cm and painted with water-based paint.

FSC® wood.

Age suitability: 3+years.

28 chunky wooden dominoes in a sturdy wooden box with a sliding lid.

Storage box measures about 33 x 20 x 2.5 cm

Age suitability: 3 years +

BJ157

Jungle Speed is a fast and furious, somewhat chaotic, game of observation and then of lightning reflexes, so that rules me out.

It is a matching game, a bit like snap, but, instead of calling out snap when two cards match, you have to be the first to grab the Totem (the yellow rubber cylinder thing) that sits in the middle of the table.

The cards are divided equally amongst the players (the more, the merrier).  On each card is a symbol in a variety of colours.  Some symbols are quite different, others are deceptively alike. Players place their cards in a pile face down in front of them.  One by one, each player flips over the top card and, as they accumulate, gradually makes a discard pile in front of him.  When one player flips over a card whose symbol matches the shape of the symbol on the top card of another player's discard pile, both players make a lunge for the Totem.  The winner then smugly hands over his discard cards to the loser who puts both these and his own discard cards face down under his cards.  Grabbing the Totem mistakenly results in you getting everybody's discard cards. The winner of the game is the first to get rid of all their cards.  Each game takes about 20 minutes.

To complicate the game further, there are several special cards.  One of these special cards for example changes the rules so that you have to match the colour of symbols rather than the shape. A different special card requires every player to lunge simultaneously for the Totem.  A third one requires everybody to flip over a card at he same time on the count of three.

2 - 8 players

Age suitability: 6 +

Here's an excellent Youtube video from Skip the Rules (NB the Totem has since been changed from wood to rubber):

 

Wooden board marked with the numbers 1 to 90.

90 wooden number discs.

48 cards

28 cm across

Age suitability: 3 years +

 

A fun matching and building game, where players match the shapes to the aliens before launching them onboard the 3D spaceship. The winner is the first person to match all their shapes.

2 - 4 players

Suitable for children ages 3 - 6

A fun and creative rhyming game, where players match rhyming pairs before feeding them to the 3D Slime Monster. As well as finding their pairs, players must incorporate them into a silly sentence for the others to hear.

2 - 4 players

Suitable for children age 5+

Be the first to find all four vegetables in this early years board game but first you have to remember where they are hidden under the leaves..

2-4 players.

Age suitability: 4 years plus.

Easy bingo-type game for preschool children.  One player picks a picture card and says what it is.  Then the player with that image on their board claims the picture and places it on their board.   The first player to complete their board wins the game.

Contains six playing cards and 54 chunky cardboard pictures.

Age suitability: 4 years plus.