Monday, April 14, 2014

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.! 


a Rafflecopter giveaway

8 comments:

sarahjunie said...

Great giveaway--I think we'd like Rush Hour at our house (ANYTHING with cars and trucks seems to be popular around here!

Not-So-SAHM said...

The Rush Hour is awesome! To make sure you're included in the giveaway, please follow the prompt in the Raflecopter above for the "Leave a Blog Post Comment" -- you can click it now that you've left a comment! Good luck!

Devon said...

Love your blog Rebecca! I think we are way too young for the two you guys enjoyed but we will soon be ready for Move and Groove. Cheers to warmer weather and of course fancy shoes. ;)

becky martinez said...

We love zingo here. We'd love any new addition to our zingo collection.

Anonymous said...

We love ThinkFun games and would love to add these two games to our game collection! Thank you for the giveaway! dorice_y@yahoo.com

Not-So-SAHM said...

Thanks, Devon! Not shown above: the sequin ballet flats Cam insisted on wearing to play. Just wait.

Anonymous said...

We enjoy our Thinkfun games, especially since they are locals. We are just about ready for Square by Square. It would be great for air travel.
Margaret
vbneone@hotmail.com

Cara, Rob, and Jacob said...

Lucy is in LOVE with Zingo! We have 3, but not Word Builder. She is struggling with reading, so I think that it would be an awesome addition to her Zingo! "collection." Even if I don't win, I am going to buy it anyway... : )

Thanks Rebecca for the info, as always! carahur@gmail.com