Bananagrams is yet another great gift idea. For a change this one is based on words. It reminds me very much of scrabble but you don’t need a board and lots of rules. It comes with 144 letter tiles and rules for a number of different games. I tried out one game on my own and came up with the following word grids fairly quickly.
You can play it in many different forms with as many as eight players. The instructions say it’s for ages 7 and up but I’d be happy to let anyone who can read play with it. It’d be great for helping with spelling and teaching new words.
If you have a child who struggles with the physical act of writing but has no trouble reading I’d be suggesting you buy two packs as they’d be really good for both parent and child to leave messages for each other. I know that’s not helping their writing skills at all but you’ve got to keep them involved somehow and I’m sure this could gradually lead to writing at some stage. Some children can read from kindergarten age but their fine motor skills are not advanced enough for them to write and this would encourage them to write short sentences without putting them in front of a computer. So long as they’ve passed that stage where they put everything in their mouths…
The zip up banana case is small and light enough so you can take it almost anywhere. Great for travel, hospital, or even (surprisingly enough) at home.
Hadn’t heard of these until coming to your competition. Thanks for the review!
struggling to catch up, and I know you expected me to comment on this one so here’s my comment. When I was a kid we used to play “Grabble Scrabble” after dinner on a Friday night. It involves putting all the scrabble tiles face down on the table, and each person takes a turn at turning a tile over. Whenever you see a word, you say it and take the letters for it and put the word in front of you. But if someone else sees an anagram for that word and says it out loud that word now belongs to them. Then turn over a new letter etc. (It doesn’t have to be your turn to call out a word.) So for example if there’s a T showing on the table, and someone turns over an A, I can say “at” and/or “ta” and get that word. Then someone else turns over an E, and in order to keep the word, I have to say “Ate, Tea, Eat” – whoever says the last variation keeps the word. Then an R gets revealed, and you can make Rate, Tear (the crying sort), Tear (the ripping sort), Tare (the weighing sort), and so on. At the end you add up the points of the letters in “your” words to see who has won.
I have a feeling there was a rule about the blank tiles, as to whether or not they had to stay the same letter throughout the game, but I can’t recall what the rule was. It’s been years since I played!
That sounds like a really great game. Fun and it helps with words. I’ll be able to try it with Bananagrams unless I can find my old Scrabble set.