Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of This is the Place, Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered and The Frugal Book Promoter and a chapbook of poetry called Tracings
This may be the most colorful, most useful, most fun little 10 x 10 cube a parent will ever run across. The Cranium Big Book of Outrageous Fun may also be the best 20 bucks they ever spent. It terms of entertainment. In terms of education. If I still had elementary kids living at home, I'd buy a half dozen or so of them and keep them on a closet shelf as a year's supply of birthday and Christmas gifts!
As a former teacher, I have always had a thing about education being fun. I also believe that children should think so, too. Ideally, they should be having so much fun at learning they won't know that they are being educated. This is the item that will do it. Billed as "The Write-it, Draw-it, Sculpt-it, Act-it Game-in-a-Book-in-a-Game," it includes a great guidebook full of fun stuff like maps and fascinating tidbits all beautifully put together with color tabs and great illustrations by Baseman. It also includes "Cranium Clay" for sculpting, a miniature hourglass timer, game cards, a spinner (that you can see through a cutout on the front of the box), an erasable marker, game pieces and game board and a marker in this toy/book's fave color, purple. How the publisher, LB Kids, stuffed all this into one box is part of the fun.
Cranium is suggested for kids seven and up. I'd say way up. It's been awhile since I did homework with kids. Some of this information was very good review for me, too. And there is no age limit on creativity.