Smart Mom’s Toy Box 1. Blokus 3D Blokus 3D Game, an exciting addition to the Blokus line, is a game of 3D strategy that sharpens spatial awareness and critical thinking skills. Players strategize to outwit their opponents while constructing four unique building plans, block by block. Blokus Classics Blokus encourages creative thinking and has received a Mensa award for promoting healthy brain activity. The goal of this game is for players to fit all of their pieces onto the board. When placing a piece it may not lie adjacent to the player’s other pieces, but must be placed touching at least one corner of their pieces already on the board. The player who gets rid of all of their tiles first is the winner and strategic thinking helps as you block moves from your opponent. 2. Double Duel – A Sound-Alike Word Game “It’s a drink. A golf ball sits on it. What’s the answer?” Tea/tee. Double Duel is a high-speed homophone game that requires sharp listening and vocabulary skills. Each buzzer makes a different fun sound (honk honk, boxing bell, doorbell, and boing). It comes with color-coded question cards so you can help students reach their potential. 3. Izzi Pattern Puzzle The Izzi Pattern Puzzle is tantalizing, brilliantly simple, and yet, vexingly tough! It teaches visual organizational skills and problem-solving abilities through color, shape, and design problems of varying complexity. Arrange the tiles to build over 30 puzzle shapes or create additional patterns. There are a multitude of solutions so you’re never playing the same game twice. 4. Jenga This is the blockbuster of all stacking games and is the original wood block game. The rules are simple enough for the whole family to play: just stack the blocks into a tower without letting it fall! But it’s fun for all ages! Who will make the tower fall? Jenga is for any number of players. 5. Match & Learn – What Comes Next? First caterpillar, then cocoon, and finally … What comes next? Find the right puzzle piece and you’ll know that it’s a beautiful butterfly! Match & Learn What Comes Next? is just a perfect partner in teaching your child logic and connections. 6. Match It! Opposites What is the opposite of day? Night! How about the opposite of inside? Outside! You will be amazed at how fast the young children can conquer this challenge…by learning the concept of opposites. 7. Math Dice In this captivating 3D math game, players try to get closest to the target number by creating different equations using addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, even powers. You won’t believe how much fun math can be! Math Dice Junior Math Dice Jr. is the perfect complement to ThinkFun’s ever-popular Math Dice. Roll the 12-sided target die to get your target number, then roll all five six-sided Scoring Dice. Using addition and/or subtraction, combine the scoring dice to match the target number, moving one space on the scoring track for every scoring die used. The first player to reach the finish line wins. 8. Perplexus Maze Game The Perplexus Original Maze Game is a clear sphere filled with multicolored pathways covering different areas of the sphere’s interior. A small metal ball rolls around on the inside, and it’s your job to guide that ball through the maze to its end. Once the ball is balanced in its starting position, it’s easy to start rolling it around the tracks. By the time you’ve learned the different passageways, you’ll realize that even though it’s easy to play, all the different ways of moving around are hard to master! Perplexus Rookie Perplexus Rookie will introduce you to the three dimensional, gravity defying world of Perplexus challenges. Flip, twist, and turn the sphere to navigate the steel ball along the numbered tracks through 75 barriers of varying difficulty. Perplexus Rookie is easy to play but still challenging to complete. A domed finish keeps the ball in place at the end to secure your success! 9. Rory’s Story Cubes – Original and Actions Rory’s Story Cubes are a remarkably simple and effective means for inspiring creative thinking and problem solving in all of us. Simply toss all the dice, examine each of the nine face-up images and let them guide your imagination through a story that begins with “Once upon a time…”. The nine dice, each with an image on six sides, hold a total of 54 images. This means that with every roll, there are over 10 million combinations for you to use as the inspiration for your story. The uses for Rory’s Story Cubes are boundless. Whether it’s in a classroom or business, the process of creating and telling your own story can provide untold understanding of our language, of the world we live in and of ourselves. The secret is not to think too deeply. Simply ‘gulp’ in the images and start talking. The story will reveal itself through the cubes and in so doing, will unleash creativity, freedom of expression and, frequently, an insight to how to solve a seemingly intractable personal or business problem. 10. Simon Flash Featuring four brainteaser games to challenge your child’s memory, speed, and logic, Hasbro’s Simon Flash is a high-tech twist on the legendary Simon game. Four electronic cubes utilize light, sound, and changing colors to keep your child having fun and learning new skills during each game. Revolutionary Wonder-Link technology allows each cube to know where you’ve placed it, when you win a round, and keeps track of the score. Ranging from 90 seconds to more than two minutes, Simon Flash contains four quick-fire games in one package: Simon Lights Off, Simon Shuffle, Simon Secret Color, and Simon Classic. Each game is associated with a colored cube (red, yellow, blue, or green) and can be started by pressing the cube that bears that color. Each game stimulates learning through challenging the player’s memory, speed, and logic. With Simon Shuffle, you solve each puzzle by lining up the colors in the original order displayed. In Simon Lights Off, you have to solve each puzzle by lining up the cubes in the correct order so that all the lights turn off. In Simon Secret Color, you solve the puzzle by figuring out the order to place the cubes in. As you get them in the right place, each cube turns to show the same color. The fourth game, Simon Classic, is the classic Simon game where you correctly repeat an increasing sequence of colors. 11. Stare! Junior The hit family game Stare! is now for kids! Children will not only have great fun playing Stare! Junior Edition, but the game is educational, too! Players take turns staring at visually stimulating images on game cards: comics, funny photos, works of art, and many more. When the 30-second timer runs out, they are asked a number of questions about the images – What color is the girl’s hat?, What is Superman holding in his left hand?, Which teddy bear is the tallest?, etc. The object is to see how much they can recall. Kids will have a great time playing, while at the same time developing vital learning skills (i.e. memory skills, concentration and imagination). They can play individually or in teams, and there is even a version for parents to join in, too! 12. Tetris Link Players drop blocks known as Tetriminos into a grid. They attempt to link same-colored Tetriminos together to earn points, while simultaneously blocking opponents from doing the same. Points are earned by linking three or more Tetriminos together, but points are deducted for leaving empty spaces in the tower grid. The game ends once the tower is completely full. 13. Wit’s End Think you know a little about a lot? Put your mind to the test with Wit’s End. This trivia game will not just test your knowledge, but engage how you think through solving a problem. Answer questions in four mind challenging categories as you work your way to the center of the board. Think laterally and wrap your mind around a teaser, deduce the odd-one-out, figure out the sequence, or try your luck in the wild card category. Be on your toes, the questions are packed with riddles and brain teasers on history, popular culture, geography, science, arts and more. Think hard, but don’t find yourself at your Wit’s End! Includes 1,600 questions on 400 game cards, large game board, playing pieces, die, and instruction sheet. Wit’s End Junior No wonder kids love to be at their Wit’s End. In this fun and unique game, kids test what they know and how well they can reason out an answer. Specially designed cards contain different questions for younger and older children. The yellow side of the card contains questions for eight- to ten-year-olds and the blue side is for 11- to 12-year-olds. This way different age groups can play together but still be challenged at their own levels. The four different card categories add plenty of exciting variety. The teasers category ask kids to solve riddles often disguised as rhymes. The odd one out category gives three choices to consider, but which one doesn’t belong? The sequence questions involve arranging items in order, like animals by size, events by date, etc. And anything goes in the wild card category, including Alphabet Soup, Word Whiz, Matching Pairs, Vowel Owl, and more. Includes 1,280 questions on 160 dual-sided cards, game board, game spinner, card holders, playing pawns, and instruction sheet.