Playing Pickles' Veggie Pick

Pickles' Veggie Pick is a really cute game. You play as a rabbit (Tibbar or one of his family members) and the goal is to avoid the dog and farmer Pickles while collecting as many veggies as you can. The catch is that you can only carry one veggie at a time so you have to make it back and forth from your rabbit hole to the veggie patches without getting caught. Each veggie is worth a different number of points and you can get more points if you get them from a patch that is not your color. The winner is the first person to get to 10 or more points.

S and I played this a couple days ago and for his first time playing he followed the rules pretty well. The recommended age for this game is 6+ and I'd say that's a pretty good estimate. S is only 4 so some of the strategy involved in getting the veggies for more points was lost on him, but he got the basic game play and enjoyed adding up his veggie totals at the end. He did end up winning with 11 points so that made him happy!

We have so many new games now that it's crazy! S has been on a serious game playing kick and weekly family game night is definitely one of our favorite nights of the week. I'll be posting a new review soon for Tibbar's Tangrams so check back for that!

For more info on this game please visit the link above and, as always, if you have any questions or want to buy a game please visit this site, find me on facebook, or leave a comment here!

Hello Friends and My Stuff Bags Foundation

Hello Friends is a cute, simple 2 player card game where kids can learn to say hello and goodbye in 6 languages. The goal is to match Hello cards and the first person to play all of their cards wins. S really likes it and it fits in perfectly with our current Cultures Around the World unit in our homeschool co-op. For more information on the game, including a video, please look here.

Now, something I really love about Hello Friends is that it is part of SimplyFun's SimplyCaring partnership with My Stuff Bags Foundation.  With every purchase of Hello Friends $5 goes towards the My Stuff Bags Foundation. If you don't know about the My Stuff Bags Foundation, here are their mission and vision statements (and please go to the link above for more on this great organization!):

"Our Mission 

The My Stuff Bags Foundation provides new belongings, comfort and hope to thousands of children each year who must be rescued from abuse, neglect and abandonment across the United States. By rallying widespread individual and corporate involvement through our unique “My Stuff Bags” program, we address the immediate physical and emotional needs of rescued children, and help support the agencies caring for them.

Our Vision 

The My Stuff Bags Foundation’s ultimate goal is to provide a My Stuff Bag filled with new belongings to each of the nearly 300,000 children each year who must enter crisis shelters and foster care with nothing of their own."

 

If you so choose, your purchase of Hello Friends will not only bring a fun, educational game into your household, but will assist in creating "My Stuff Bags" for many rescued children. I hope that everyone who reads this will consider this offer* through the SimplyCaring program. Make a difference today!

*please use this link for purchasing to make sure your donation is included.

 

Silly Stories from Pickles' Pig Tales!

 When I went to a SimplyFun party and encountered this game I was not convinced that I'd enjoy playing it with my kids. I envisioned that horrible "I'm going to a picnic and I'm bringing (insert whatever someone said)" game that I played in school as a child. It just seemed like a chore to remember a bunch of stuff. However, the difference between that picnic game and this one is that the picnic game was just remembering a bunch of random items while Pickles' Pig Tales is creating a silly story that everyone adds to. Now, I have to say that I find this game highly amusing and I do not mind playing it with my kids at all!

S told me yesterday that this is his new favorite game. He loves coming up with something to say for each card he draws. I love to watch him use his imagination to come up with things and see how well he remembers everything else. It's just great to see the wheels turning, so to speak.

Retelling the story.

Game play is basically that Pickles is invited to the castle to eat and the only way to enter the castle is to make up a silly story. Each player rolls the die and moves the appropriate amount of spaces (unless they roll Pickles' face in which they don't move and just draw a card). After moving, a card is drawn and the player says a part of the story to go with it. There are some arrows on the board that can mean draw a card and don't say anything, put a card back and its sentence is removed from the story, or switch one card for a new card in the deck and the sentence is changed for that part of the story. It can get pretty interesting and is definitely fun!

Overall, this is a really cute game. Although Z is too young to partake in the story telling he loved listening to the silly things we came up with and kept asking us to tell the story again. It was very cute to see him engaged even though he wasn't able to really play.

For more information on this game (product description and video) please look here.

While we were playing I decided to switch the camera to video so that I could show you an example of a random silly story. I love how excited he is at the end. Enjoy!

Fun with Clover Leap and Digger's Garden Match

Clover Leap and Digger's Garden Match were the first 2 SimplyFun games S played. Needless to say, he loves them!

Clover Leap    

This is a really cute game where the idea is to create silly sentences to get points. Basically, you move the sheep around and collect clovers either before all the clover tiles run out or the sun reaches the nighttime position. The clover tiles are broken into 4 colors; white for subject, blue for verb, yellow for adjective, and red for object. You need one of each color to make a complete sentence. One sentence that S made yesterday was " I make hairy buses." You can see how this can get quite amusing!

Rolling to see what to do next.

One part of the game that S loves is avoiding the sheep dog piece if someone moves it near your sheep. Of course, I'm sure it helps that I make a scared sheep face and really act it up so he laughs hysterically when the dog scares one of my sheep. When we first got this game we played it for a full hour and a half, only stopping for dinner. Since then S has asked to play it at least once a day. It is definitely one of his favorites!

For more information about Clover Leap or to order please click here.

Digger's Garden Match  

This game is also very popular in our house. The object of the game is to match tiles by either color or shape and moving your dog bone the appropriate amount until someone reaches 50 points on the board. This game can be as easy or as difficult as you make it. You can match 1, 2 , 3 or more sides together to see how many points you can get.

Deciding where to put his tile.

S is getting good at matching 2 sides of the tiles together, but he's only been able to match 3 sides a few times. On our last family game day, my husband and I had a little competition going to see who could match the most sides and get the most points. I topped out at 12 points for 3 sides before we ran out of tiles. It is a lot of fun and S asks to play this one all the time!

Final tile layout.

If you'd like more information about Digger's Garden Match please click here.





Overall, I would (and do) recommend these two games to anyone I talk to. They are a lot of fun and it's so great seeing the kids working out everything as they play.

If you'd like more information on games please feel free to contact me here or on my facebook page.

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog, Play-Learn-Connect!

I recently attended a SimplyFun Party, and like many people I had no idea what to really expect. I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the games that I got to play and by the end of the party I had ordered several to be able to play with my children. After those games arrived, my children were eager to start playing and so was I. We spent 3 fun-filled hours testing out different games on that first day! That just furthered my resolve that these games were great! The more I learned, played, and connected with my children the more I believed in the product so I decided that I would become a SimplyFun Independent Consultant. This blog will be dedicated to providing information, demos, special offers, and reviews on SimplyFun products that my children and I enjoy so I hope that you will check back frequently to see what fun we have in store!

I will now leave you with the wise words of the SimplyFun company and a link to the website so that you can learn more and browse the products.

"Learning & Connecting... Through Play!

At SimplyFun, we make learning fun and easy for children and keep families connected. How? Through the powerfully simple concept of PLAY. 

Play teaches children important academic, social and developmental skills. It helps them make sense of their world. From ABC's to saying please, children are hard-wired to learn through play. 

Play allows important human connections to take root, to grow, and to flourish. It allows us to share with each other — to really know each other as human beings. 

And ultimately, play lightens our load. It relieves stress and creates joyful memories that we can go back to mentally to help us through our rough patches. 

Play keeps our families connected!" - A Mission that Matters -SimplyFun