Chaos Theory Reviews

I was lucky enough to take part in the Mom Central Cranium Blog Tour recently. I’ve always loved Cranium games (we already own Cariboo and Hullabaloo, both big hits here, especially the latter which gets you up and moving), so I was eager anyway, but I was particularly interested since this is a new division of Cranium, their Bloom line. It’s especially made for preschoolers and help kids learn while they play. I am a big believer in learning by playing and learning by doing, so I signed on right away.

I got two complimentary games from the company, the Let’s Play, Count & Cook Game, and the Let’s Go to the Zoo Seek & Find Puzzle.

While the cooking game is a little too advanced for Breanna, Hayley still had a lot of fun playing with it, even at age five. The basic premise of the game is to choose a recipe from the book, and then roll the dice to move around the board, trying to collect all the ingredients. The person who picks up the last ingredient wins. She had a great time playing it, especially when you get a wild card and can choose any extra ingredient to put in the recipe (pickles in the cupcakes? Why not?).

Meanwhile, Breanna enjoyed the zoo puzzle game tremendously. At only age two, she doesn’t quite have the hang of putting puzzles together, but she gave it her best shot, helping me. I would give her the right piece and encourage her to turn it different ways until it fit properly - she was so proud every time she fit two pieces together! Once the puzzle is together, there are game cards that ask you to find things in the picture - can you find the penguin? How about something red? A puzzle version of “I Spy”, basically, and she enjoyed looking for things as I read them out.

Both games are great. They’re both short and quick to play which is an important factor to consider when you’re dealing with pre-schoolers - they don’t have the attention span to play something as long as, say, Monopoly. In the cooking game, for instance, you can move your game piece in either direction. What’s great about that is that you don’t have to spend 20 minutes going around and around the board, desperately trying to land on the one last ingredient that you need. It’s really nice to have some games that do take that time into consideration.

I definitely recommend them to parents of preschoolers. I especially recommend them if you also have older kids because I know one thing that offends Breanna terribly is having to watch Hayley play a game while not being able to join in - it’s really great to have something that she can play too.

Then again, it’s Cranium. Cranium rocks anyway, so the fact that they’ve created a great line for younger kids? No surprise to me at all!