At a recent pre-kindergarten meeting for my 4 year old they were discussing the importance of a large vocabulary for reading. I don’t know the source or the exact number, but they said a child generally needs to have over 12,000 words in their vocabulary in order to start reading. This is just one of the many reasons I love games and activities for my children that are educational. This can come in so many forms, sometimes the only education is learning patience, turn taking, how to lose, etc. And sometimes games offer so much more. Teaching, while being fun and exciting. Super Duper Publications recently sent me a selection of their games to try out with my kids. All of them are so educational/beneficial to my kids. We all love them.
Super Duper Publications games are extremely popular with teachers, therapists and homeschoolers. Different games teach a variety of skills from vocabulary, problem solving, physical development, speech, etc. I found that different games were definitely more appropriate for different ages of my children even though most I received were recommended for Pre K+.
By far my favorite was the MagneTalk® Yogarilla® Exercises Game • Grades Pre K+ • $21.95
OT may stand for occupational therapy but it’s also the first two letters of OTis the Gorilla! And he gets to show kids how to form their little bodies into a tree, cricket, bridge and many more objects with this MagneTalk Yogarilla magnetic game! Children will enjoy working on strength, balance, and motor planning as they imitate OTis doing 15 different yoga poses.
This game as well as most we received offered a few different methods of gameplay. We found it to be the most fun to just let the kids draw a card and we would all imitate the pose that Otis was doing. It was hilarious to watch them do the poses and they thought it was great to see who could do them the best and stretch the farthest on some of them. We have often talked lately about the importance of stretching especially with my daughter in dance class and this was a fun and easy way to get them to do it while they just thought we were having fun! All of my kids enjoyed this game regardless of ages.
I think that Danica (7 yrs) and Kurtis (4 yrs) favorite game is the Word Joggers® for Categories • Grades Pre K+ • $64.95
Instead of B-I-N-G-O there’s Bat-Frog-Cat-Octopus-Ant on this “bingo” card for animals. The more knowledge students have about words — their attributes, associations, and categories — the quicker they can retrieve and provide information about those words in conversation. Word Joggers for Categories is a fun bingo game with colorful boards and cards that target language processing skills needed for identifying, describing plus categorizing items. The vocabulary addresses six common categories (Animals, Food, Clothing, Home, School, and Transportation), with 24 items per category. Each category includes five bingo game boards and three sets of cards (Vocabulary Picture Cards, Attribute Cards, and Category Cards) for a total of 30 boards and 396 cards!
This game also offered several options for game play, but we most often just take the Category Cards and read them and let the kids choose the item on their bingo card that they feel is fitting for the question. For example: on the animal cards there was one that is “an animal with no legs”. From this they had a couple different choices on the cards such as snake or fish. Sometimes it is just a color such as “a green food”. The easier ones like that my 2 yr old was able to do, but for the most part he was not able to keep up in this game. I thought it was great as we suddenly found ourselves talking about what a mammal is as one of the animal cards was “a mammal”. I am not sure I totally got through to Kurt on that one, but Danica definitely got it. The kids also learned after awhile that they should be more selective about which animal, food, school item they covered in order to best get bingo.
My 2 year old Keegan really loved the Photo Fish Classifying Magnetic Game • Grades Pre K+ • $43.95
Little fishermen and women will get hooked on Photo Fish as they improve their sorting and classifying skills. These magnetic foam fish come with stickers showing photos of everyday items in the categories of Transportation, Clothing, Animals, Food and Around the Home. Grab a fishing pole, choose a category then reel in the fish that matches it! Comes with 60 stickers and 55 magnetic photo fish.
This was by far the most age appropriate game for Keegan, Danica at 7 yrs old was bored with it, but both of my boys enjoyed it. They loved trying to catch the magnetic fish and tell me what category they belonged to. I also asked Keegan often what color his fish was and made him tell me what the pictures were on the cards. It is amazing what you take for granted that your children know and also how much they will surprise you with what they do know. The boys really loved that the game had fishing poles and came packed in a plastic tackle box.
Danica and Kurtis also really enjoyed Hopping Frogs® Language Game • Grades Pre K+ • $49.95
You don’t need to read to get hopping on this fun board game. This hands-on game combines the fun of children helping their frogs “jump” from the “frog pond” (board) to their “lily pads” with development of early language and articulation skills. For articulation, the 420 game cards focus on earlier developing sounds (P, B, T, D, K, G, and F) in a fun and enjoyable way. Each sound has specific question cards for initial, medial and final positions in single words.
This was a little hard to play with Danica and Kurtis. They both enjoyed it, but Danica is older and definitely has a better vocabulary so the questions were generally easier for her, though she definitely doesn’t get them all right either. This was perfect for Kurtis who struggles still with finding the right word for things, for example “The day that comes after today is?” Tomorrow is a concept he struggles with. The idea of this game is to make them answer the questions thereby increasing/using their vocabulary, but the cards all use the developing sounds either in the front, middle or end of the word, thus making the kids say the words and use the sounds. It is a much more fun way to get them to work on their sounds. Again, this is something we need to work on more with Kurtis so it was perfect for him. Keegan was able to answer some of the questions, but often didn’t know the word we were looking for so it was hard for him.
Another fun game we received was the Story Prediction Fun Deck • Grades 1-8 • $32.95
This Story Prediction Fun Deck with Super Duper Secret Decoder has 56 cards to improve your students’ ability to predict what will happen next. Students listen to or read a story and choose the answer that makes the most sense for the story ending. Students can self-check answers with the Super Duper Secret Decoder. Just hold the decoder over the answer choices. The correct answer is highlighted in invisible ink!
This game actually says grades 1-8 so obviously it was much more appropriate for my first grader. She is usually able to predict correctly what the card is looking for. For example: “It is Saturday. Marcus is outside with his friends. They are playing hide and seek. Marcus closes his eyes and counts from 1 to 100. Then… A. Marcus’s friends go and hide. B. Marcus hides. C. Marcus takes a nap.” I will say some of these cards are a little tricky as a couple of the answers may seem plausible, but one is always the most likely. Kurtis is also able to get a lot of these right, but by far his favorite part is the secret decoder which you shine on the card to reveal the correct answer. I will also mention there is a key card included with all of the correct answers in case you lose the decoder.
Super Duper Publications also offers some great stocking stuffer items. We received a pack of 60 Ticklin’ Tongue Twister Pencils • All ages • $15.85
Everyone needs a new No. 2 pencil but this one entertains — with a tongue twister on each one. Can you say ten tiny turtles sitting on a tiny tin tub turned tan! Pencils measure 7 1/2″ long.
I can’t wait to surprise my kids with these on Christmas morning. They love pencils especially for when they are playing school!
BUY IT!
All of these great items and MANY more are available at Super Duper Publications Online Store. Super Duper Publications offers free shipping on all orders over $20 in the US and Canada.
DISCOUNT:
Use coupon code “D9WDFHNH” to receive 15% off your purchase now through Dec 20th.
Disclosure: I received samples for purpose of this review however all thoughts remain my own.
Roxana Barriere says
I have never heard of Super Duper Games. Learn something new everyday. 🙂 It honestly seems like it would be a lot of fun for my niece and nephews to play. Who all range from 3-5 years old. And you can’t beat the fact that they are educational.
Reina or Linda Tamayo says
Super Duper games , thanks for sharing !!
Michelle Johnson says
We have been tossing around the idea of homeschooling our son when it is time and these games look like a great idea if we go ahead with it. Even if we don’t, these would be great games to supplement his education while having some fun together. Thank you for the discount code. I will definitely be checking them out. 🙂
Autum says
These are great games/activities to do as a family. I’m always trying to find good learning games for my boys that will keep them interested. I really like the story prediction game.
carolina ramos says
great games
stephen radford says
My daughter would love all of them
Tara C says
I’ve been planning to purchase some items from Super Duper for a while now – I have two children with autism, and love their selection for special needs kids! I’m actually going to go buy the Hopping Frogs game right now, thank you so much for the review!
Christine says
It’s the perfect way to get my kids to do their speech exersizes. They do not get bored since each board is a different game.
Gianna says
I can see my kids enjoying all of these.