Miscellaneous Madness: Thinkfun Games Review + GIVEAWAY!!!

This post was sponsored by Thinkfun. We received free versions of the games we played in return for writing an honest review. The opinions in this post are our own.

As many of you know, we had a bit of a rough winter filled with much too much time spent indoors. So by the time "spring" started to show its face, we'd started to grow tired of our go-to games. We were SUPER excited when Thinkfun asked if we'd be interested in reviewing some of their brand new and recently re-released games. We picked out two for the 5+ crowd: Rush Hour, Jr. and Zingo! Word Builder and loved both of them.

Rush Hour, Jr. -- designed for children aged 5 - 15, Rush Hour Jr., is a fabulous logic game with varying levels of difficulty wherein the player solves a puzzle to unblock a traffic jam of cars and get the ice cream truck on its way. Both Kane and I play a similar game on mom's iPhone, so we picked this one up right away (and seemed to like that it was more tactile). It took a little restraint to remember not to lift the brightly-colored vehicles up off the board, but we thought it was fun to "drive" them around and rescue the ice cream truck.

Setting up the puzzles took a bit for me, but is just another part of the problem solving involved. We've been pretty good with taking turns and have made our way through most of the beginner cards so far. Mom likes that the game works for many different skill levels (even she had some trouble with the more difficult cards!) and that it could be portable -- it comes with a nice mesh bag for the pieces and the playing board is pretty compact.

Zingo! Word Builder -- intended for the K-2 grade crowd, this game of fill-in the blank Bingo is just a bit above both of our skill levels. Cam wouldn't sit still for it, but I liked sliding the Zinger forward to get the letter tiles. Each Zingo card is designed to accommodate two different skill levels (beginner on one side and more advanced on another) and each player can pick whatever side best suits them.

I'm not quite to the spelling phase, so mom let me slide the Zinger to get the letters and then she'd tell me the words I could spell with them on my card. I'd then try to find the beginning letter I recognized and finish spelling the word with the tile. Mom loved that the game provided an interactive and fun way to get me to focus on letters and that she could tailor it to my skill set now, while still having room to grow into it.

AND ... Thinkfun is giving away one of their new or recently re-released games to a lucky reader (U.S. readers only) -- your choice! You can pick one of the two games we reviewed, or from these other great games: Move & Groove, Last Letter, Zingo! Timetelling, Hoppers, or Square by Square. 

Enter by either liking our Facebook Page and following the prompt below OR commenting on this post through the prompt below. Extra chances to win by doing BOTH! 

The contest will run to Sunday, April 20th. Good luck! THE CONTEST IS OVER. CONGRATULATIONS TO CARA H.! 


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