Learning without realizing
Written: Jan 25 '02
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Durability: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Educational, challenging, entire family can play together
Cons: Potential Choking Hazard due to tiny pieces.
The Bottom Line: Hours of family fun with a twist. It is a valuable learning tool that every home should have.
|
|
|
| judypetley's Full Review: Parker Brothers Boggle |
Boggle is a game that the entire family can play together. It is a great start in early education. Even though it states on the game for 8 and older you can use this game to help your younger children start learning their alphabet and letter recognition. It is great to help your younger children get a head start in spelling.
I purchased this game for myself because I used to play it with my family all the time when I was young. We would have hours of fun writing down words and competing against each other. The most fun I had was trying to make up words and see if they would fly. Sometimes I would see one word and find numerous others that I could create with the same letters. This was like a puzzle to me and challenged not just my known vocabulary but opened it up to experimenting with the letter and creating new words that I normally didn't use. Not only that if I was challenged on the spellings of the words I would look them up and be delightfully surprised that I learned to spell a new word but then also know the meaning of the those words. In turn I was broadening my vocabulary and learning the proper spelling of some hard to remember words. Especially when it comes to the Q words.
Now that I am a parent and have 4 kids I find that it is even more fun challenging my kids to open up their eyes and advance their own brain power. They only see it as a game to pass the time but when they see words that I didn't see it gives them such a delight to point it out to me. Boggle is not for everyone. You must be able to be open to writing, laughing, and just plan having a good time with other adults and especially your children and hopefully others.
I would highly recommend this game be in every home. It doesn't seem worth your time and money but after you play it with your children several times it starts to become addicting. I played it first with my oldest, who is 15, child who just wanted to play and see what it was all about. Now she wants to play it every single day. She then got her sister, who is 14, to play along with us. Now the three of us play at least 1 hour a day. But the best part of it was when my 9 year old asked if he could play with us. He never wants to play games that have an educational benefit. He would rather be outside goofing with his friends. He started to play and at first he had a difficult time getting three letter words so I decided to let him first start with simple two letter words and then gave him hints on building bigger words. Within a matter of 2 hours he was confident enough to write words 3, 4, 5, and larger words. Some of the times there were words that were spelled incorrectly so when this happened I had him look up the right spelling and learn the meaning and then he remembered the correct spelling.
Now when my son gets out of school, he and I play for about 30 minute before the older kids come home. He enjoys his quality time with me. Then the three kids and I play together. This is the only time I can get those three together without fighting and arguing with one another.
But the most beneficial aspect of this game it that you can use if for numerous other learning techniques. I use this game to aid my youngest, who is 3, in learning and becoming familiar with her alphabet. I feel it can't hurt to give her a head start in the learning department. It seems here lately that our public education system is failing our youth and that it is up to us parents to do something to aid our children in their educational needs. I also use this to help my youngest get familiar with phonic type of learning. I start her out small with the sounds that each letter makes and add a letter at a time for her to learn. Not only that I use the lettered die to help her to start her writing process. I put a piece of paper over the dice and have her trace the letter to help her get the feel for writing her letters correctly. This is still a work in progress and I am not sure if it is going to help give her a head start. I look at it this way it couldn't hurt to try new innovative ways to stimulate her young mind and get her interested in school so when she does start it is not too overwhelming for her.
The advantages of purchasing this game:
#1 Fun for the entire family
#2 Educational benefits without the kids realizing
#3 Inexpensive
#4 Small/compact for easy storing
#5 Unlimited possibilities in promoting proper
spelling, word recognition, writing, and
vocabulary skills.
The disadvantages of purchasing this game:
#1 Lettered die are a choking hazard for small
children
#2 3 minute timer is easily broken and sand could
cause choking in smaller children
#3 Can be noisy when shaking the letters.
#4 Can get frustrating when the timer runs out and
you were unable to get all the words written down
#5 Can become addicting.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 6.99
Type of Toy: Board Game
Age Range of Child: Whole Family
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
judypetley
|
|
Member: Judy
Location: Kapolei, HI
Reviews written: 32
Trusted by: 19 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.