18 Jun Jumbo Bananagrams
Bananagrams Inc have released a super-sized version of the highly popular Bananagrams game. The game consists of 144 three inch flexible, plastic letter tiles and a fun banana shaped tote bag to store them.
The aim of the game is to race players to build crossword grids using all your letter tiles.
I played the game with my 5 year old daughter and she picked up the rules very quickly. All the tiles are placed in a pile faced down and each player chooses 15-20 tiles. All players turn their cards over at the same time and start to make words using their letter tiles. All the words need to intersect as if you were building your own crossword grid. The first player that uses all their letters shouts “Peel”. All players then grab another letter tile and carry on making words until a player has used all their letters again and “Peel” is then shouted. The game finishes when all letters have been grabbed and one player has used all their letters.
This game was extremely fun to play and was a wonderful way to get my daughter to try and spell words. The game is targeted at 5 years + but I think my daughter did struggle a bit to think of new words. Older children would benefit from the game more as they have more understanding of words and spelling rules. Having said this, my daughter still found the game enjoyable to play and she did learn how to spell a couple of new words – fantastic for any parent!
My youngest son also wanted to use the letter tiles but being too young to play the Bananagrams games, I used them to play a matching game instead. I placed pairs of letter tiles on the floor and he hand to pick up the matching pairs. He absolutely loved playing this game and I loved that he was learning to recognise letters!
The Jumbo Bananagrams game is a wonderful game for all the family. Being jumbo in size it is ideal for playing outside in the garden or park but can also be played indoors if wanted.
