Christmas has come early here at The Madhouse as all the major toy companies seem to have picked the same time to send us through their top picks in time for the Christmas shopping rush !
On the hotseat today is the Red Rover Game for preschoolers aged 3+. In the box, you get a very cute, talking, electronic red dog who has a backpack filled with 12 chunky bones (very handy for packing them away in at the end so that they don't get lost). The bones have colours, numbers, letters and shapes on them and the idea is, you place them all face down, press the dog's nose then rush around trying to find the bone he has asked for, using sayings such as "Red Rover, Red Rover, bring a yellow bone over".
The game can be played by one to four players (but even playing with three kids, I would say that is the maximum really, as there just aren't enough bones to play with otherwise). You can make it into quite an energetic, competitive game by placing the bones quite some distance apart, all over the floor in the lounge for example. When playing by himself (with help), 2-year-old Pierre is quite happy to just sit at the table feeding bones to the dog though, and gets very excited when he talks to him !
I love the learning through play opportunities, encouraging young players to recognise colours, shapes, letters and numbers, as well as test their memory skills, trying to remember where the different bones are, and count the bones to see who won. I do feel it's a shame there aren't more bones though because you only get to practise very few shapes, letters and numbers. Being able to pick the level of play is great when you have several children of different ages - "puppy dog" level focuses on colours and "big dog" level adds in the shapes, numbers and letters.
It's great fun for the whole family to play, being easily adaptable for gentle one-on-one learning play or more raucous competitive play with the older siblings ! Just don't forget to buy batteries because they're not included when you buy it.
star rating : 4.5/5
RRP : £19.99
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My son would love this, he is absolutely crazy about dogs, so this would be perfect
ReplyDeleteheard a lot about this game - looks pretty good x
ReplyDeletefantastic toy
ReplyDelete