Cranium Playground Board Game

This game from Cranium lives up to my expectations. I bought it for a preschooler who loved Caraboo and I thought was ready for more advanced skills. This game has 4 topic areas just like the grownup Cranium, but aimed at preschoolers: counting, alphabet, drawing, and dancing. My preschooler and school age child really enjoyed making letter shapes with their bodies, and drawing simple animals, and everyone enjoyed the dance moves. There is expansion options for older children to up the challenges. The board is well designed with moving playground equipment that is fun to interact with. The timer is a catchy non-annoying tune. It took a group of 4 of us around 1/2 hour to play.

This is a great game for all ages. We can easily adapt the rules for our 3-year-old primarily by not using the timer and just rolling the dice to determine how many spaces you get to move. It is a great game for children with gross motor or motor planning difficulties. In fact, our son's ABA therapists like to use it with him during their sessions. The time it takes to get through the game is also good for young children.

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We loved Caribu Island so I ordered this for my 2 and 4 year olds, its so much fun we really love this game more. Great game hours of entertainment. I have to play with the 2 year old and help her but 4yr knows just what to do!

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Cranium Playground requires children to perform 4 different activities to move along the game board:

-Draw an image (from the hopscotch images),

-Dance (copy the four images provided by rolling the green caterpillar),

-Form a letter of the alphabet with their body,

-Roll dice to match the numbered dice with it's corresponding pictures (ie number 2 would match with the image of 2 kites, 2 balls etc)

All 4 activities need to be completed during the allowed time.

The good:

It's a quick and easy game to play, it doesn't require my intervention or assistance.

It's easy to clean up because the board game is built into the box, so just throw the little pieces in and put on the lid.

The not so good:

There's almost no educational value. They have to draw, think a little bit about forming a letter and matching the number dice with the correct number of pictures.

There's no strategy to this game. Winning/completing is mostly luck and ability to work within the timer which has been easy for my kids to accomplish.

My two kids, aged 4 and 6 have fun playing this game but I don't know how long their interest will hold for this game.

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I got this game on sale, waiting for a rainy day to use it. My children love Playground, and it is a silly, fun, and active game! It says 4 and up, but my 3 year old can play it without much trouble, and the game design is helpful for young children (the game board is the bottom of the box, the timer is some music that plays at the push of a button, and all the storage is built in, so set-up and clean up is a cinch). This is perfect for those days when you want to expend energy, but conditions outside don't warrant it. I think the educational value in it varies by child (not to say that a game requires educational value to be worth playing, of course), but for all children (especially younger ones), the activity of making letter shapes with their bodies is quite a creative and problem-solving activity, especially trying to do so quickly. The dancing one requires them to interpret and follow instructions and try to do it all quickly, repeating the pattern. Regardless of what they learn from it, this is a game that my children love, and will play over and over and over. The sound of their laughter as they race to complete their tasks before the time runs out is well worth it!