Snails Pace Race

Snail's Pace Race is a lovely first game for any child.  Six colorful snails line up at one end of a game board.  Players take turns rolling two colored dice.  Whatever colors you roll allow the snails of corresponding colors to move forward one space.  If both dice show the same color, that snail moves two spaces.  The snails race toward the finish line, so you are free to cheer for whichever snail you desire, or change allegiances when your favorite gets behind.

This simple cooperative game teaches the basics of game play (turn taking, dice rolling, and moving one or two spaces at a time) without the stress of winning or losing.  My children often wanted to play until all the snails passed the finish line or wanted them to turn around and race back to the start.  Appropriate for ages three and up, it is a great introduction to the world of board games.

Crayon Physics

Our guest blogger today is my eldest son. He originally wrote this review for the California HomeSchooler, the member-magazine of the HomeSchool Association of California.

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Crayon Physics is a game where you have to draw a line with your pointer, which looks like a crayon on the screen, to get a ball to a star. Sometimes you draw a line or an odd shape, like a polygon, or a circle.

When you get to higher levels, you get rockets. If they get hit on top, they take off.  If they stay in one place too long, they blow up.

Crayon Physics starts off easy. It takes a certain amount of stars to get to a new level.

Everything is made of crayon drawings.

I like it because every time your ball falls away, you get it back. Sometimes they give you hints what to do.

I think other kids would like this.

Crayon Physics Deluxe from Petri Purho on Vimeo.

(Note: Crayon Physics was the Independent Games Festival Grand Prize winner in 2008.)

Article posted by Sarah J. Wilson

Cosmeo

Billed as "Discovery Channel's Online Homework Help Service", Cosmeo is a collection of videos, still pictures, web links, "Brain Games," and tutorials for kindergarten through high school. This is a subscription site that costs around $10/month and we've found it to be very worthwhile.

At your fingertips are literally thousands of videos and clips from Discovery and their parent company, United Streaming, searchable by entering a keyword or two or by following a cascading menu by subject area. We've found the videos most useful for science and social studies topics. Before visiting the King Tut exhibit a few years ago, for instance, we watched several videos about Egypt. When we were all down with the flu last year, we watched videos about germs. My son takes his newest Ranger Rick magazine to the computer each month and looks up the animals he's interested in. He also looks at still photos and articles about the animals.

We've also had a lot of fun with the Brain Games section. This large collection of Flash based games has taught us about the human body, chemistry, and most recently beginning programming skills.

Although you can find videos on YouTube and there are many free games out there, it's nice to have a child friendly collection of resources at our fingertips. The account includes one parent login and four student logins, which can be shared with family and friends.

Othello

Othello has been around for 30 years or more, making it a "classic" board game. It is a fairly straightforward strategy game for two players and a great introduction to strategy games in general. The 64 identical pieces are two sided-- one black and one white. Players take turns putting down a single new piece and "capturing" the other color between the piece they put down and one already on the board of their color. "Captured" pieces are turned over to expose the player's color. The game board is ever changing and moves that capture many pieces in one turn can spell disaster in the next.

Buried in the rules is way to help even the game out between more and less experienced players. It turns out the corners of the board are important because they cannot be captured once played, so placing four pieces of the weaker player's color in the corners gives that player some advantage.

My son began enjoying this game around age eight, but his six year old sister can also play. Beginning players first learn how to logic out which spots allow the most captures, later players start to think ahead and sometimes take lesser pieces for greater pieces later.

Although I think part of the fun of the game is the physical act of flipping the pieces back and forth, there are also free versions on the web.