[Ad- gifted products] We are lucky to have a large backyard, one that can hold lots of toys! Though it is uneven, we have been enjoying the time we spend out the in yard and slowly collecting a range of toys and activities for the children to play with. We wanted to share some of our discoveries and best toys with you as the days are getting warmer and time outside needs to be taken advantage of!
[Ad- gifted product] 7ate9 is the latest one of the Ideal family game collection to be doing the rounds at the house – it’s a fun little card game based around quick maths and hand management. It’s also, like the other recent Ideal games which I’ve written about, got a really cool, compact storage option that comes with it. In 7ate9 the goal is quite simple, as a matter of fact, you just have to get rid of all of your cards before the other players.
Each card is oval-shaped, with a main number printed twice in the middle of it – so it can be seen from upside-down and right-side-up. This number can be from 1 through to 10, with ten. Then, in the corner of each card, there is a plus and minus symbol as well as a number from 1 to 3. Each card is coloured to match this little, top-corner multiplier – useful to remember for quicker play.
[Ad- gifted product] I only recently wrote about the fantastic Slam It! one of the family-friendly tabletop games that Ideal have on the market. Alongside that, there’s been a couple of other Ideal games that have been doing the rounds with the family. The favourite, by far and large, is Grabolo, a game of quick reflexes and memory.
Grabolo is a favourite for a couple of reasons, I’ll get into those reasons in a moment, but let’s talk about what it actually is first. Grabolo is a tub of 36 pieces, an instruction leaflet and two dice. There are six designs for the pieces, and six colours for them too. This means that you’ll have six (for instance) pig pieces, but each one will be a different colour. One die has the colours on, and the other has the shapes on.
[Ad- gifted product] There’s a lot of different tabletop games out there now, and more people than ever playing them. Slam It! from Ideal is certainly a bit more Table Top Toy rather than a board game, but it was a welcome addition to the physical games rotation that we’ve set up with the kids this year.
Slam It! has a lot going for it. Much like a lot of Ideal’s current kids range it is designed to be compact, contained and quick to learn. Once the outer packaging is removed Slam It! is reduced to a simple yellow case which clicks open and shut. Within it, there are pre-divided compartments, where you can separate out the cards which are introduced in each of the different difficulty games. Some of these are bombs, others reverse the direction of play and others mean that a turn is skipped. It’s incredibly simple to pick up and play, as simple as Say it, See it, Slam it.
[Ad- gifted product] We are a big fan of both board games and family games in our household. Something that can be played together with everyone in our house, is always a big plus. We do play a lot of video games together, as both myself and my partner work in the games industry, but we also have ‘no-screen days’ to focus more on our toys and small projects in our household. Though Pointz isn’t technically a board game – or even a tabletop game as it’s best to play it on the floor – it really fit in with the tabletop and family nights we have. Pointz contains a bunch of cards inside a big spinner, and those cards and the container itself are all you need to play the game. I should note that it’s very easy to get these cards into the spinner, as the container opens up. The bottom of the container has a small nub, which is what the spinner is balanced on, so that, regardless of your strength, it can spin easily on flooring.