Customer Reviews

The Wonder Forge Dr Seuss Super Stretchy ABCs

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Purchased this product for a November 2009 birthday. The recipient was a four year old boy. It kept his attention and he enjoyed the competition. He was a little too short to stretch all items, but we compensated for him. It was fun for all of us playing. It challenged his ability to follow directions and execute the required movement and would be considered age appropriate.

I played this game with my 4-year-old son. (It is designed for children ages 3 and up.) I almost gave up entirely, at first, because my son was fascinated by all the different parts of the game: the tornado, the little chips/coins, and so on. Once he settled down, we began to play. One problem I found was that it was impossible, for both me and my son, to touch our ear to any of the letters. I used to play Twister as a kid (and this game is an educational twist on Twister, since they have to be able to recognize the alphabet), so I was interested in the physical aspect of the game; however, we had no success with getting our ears to touch the mat. The creators of the game could have limited themselves to hands and feet, or added elbows and knees.

The tornado motiv is fun, but the footprints that signal the end of the game seem superfluous to me.

All things considered, a fun and educational game. But I think that the creators tried too hard to distinguish it from Twister (which was simpler).

We are a gaming family. We love board games, card games and video games. Out of the many, many games we have in our house, this has got to be the most educational and fun at the same time combo game. My children (3 and 4 when we bought it, now almost 5 and 6 years old) consistently come back and ask to play this game. It teaches patience in taking turns, and great letter recognition (early reading skills) and social interaction.

Taking turns - It is still engaging while you are waiting for your turn. One player can operate the board and call out the letters and pictures, while the other plays trying to find the various letters on the mat.

Social interaction - we cheer each other on, and interact to help each other find and reach for the right letter or picture.

Letter recognition - to play you look at the letters that come up on the chips on the board, then find those same letters or pictures on the mat. You place the corresponding body part (ear, hand, foot) on the letter on the mat. It's a silly game, which captivates easily distracted young ones, and "tricks" them into learning.

This game earns it's critic acclaims (It has won the Oppenheim Platinum Toy Award). I keep thinking at some point my kids will outgrow this, but they love it still. We love it so much we have purchased one for my son's kindergarten classroom.

Don't pass this game up. I cannot say enough good about it. The only incredibly small issue I have is the little "collection boxes" that you use to hold your chips are a bit flimsy cardboard, but nothing a bit of tape cannot fix if needed. Also, it's good to get 3-4 ziploc bags to contain all the pieces in an organized fashion.

We purchased this game for our 4.5 year old daughter after playing some of the other cat in the hat games. I thought that it would be a little more like twister but it is basically a 'horseshoe' shaped map with letters (and words corresponding to those letters) on the horseshoe. You then have another part of the game which is the letter assigner that you spin and get letters assigned that you have to put hands, feet, and an ear on.

As far as difficulty, it is as difficult as you want it to be. Our daughter has been doing physical therapy to catch up to her classmates and that is why this toy intrigued us. It is very good in that way as she has to work on core strength and balance to get to all of the letters. But nothing in the game says that you have to get them all each time.

I wonder how much educational value it has though. The player must identify what letter they need to be standing on, but for our daughter this was a minimal task.

In conclusion, one month out from getting the game and our daughter still enjoys playing it. Great team building as you can cheer each other on. It is a durable product, but it does have a lot of parts (mainly the letter disks and feet) that could get lost (oh yeah forgot about the cards.) It would still be a strong recommend in my book.

My little guys love this game! This is quite a confidence builder for my 4 year old who already is good with his alphabet but this high action, high movement game reinforces his knowledge. Like Dr Seuss, it is silly but in the end you learn a lot from it!

My son (2 1/2) loves this game! He doesn't want to stop playing. It's a fun way to learn the ABC's while actually physically interacting with the board. We adjust the play a little bit for him so he just has to find the picture/letter and put the body part on it to get his coin. He really enjoys the matching aspect too, and loves to watch mommy & daddy try to stretch around the board. I love that this is educational and interactive (as opposed to just sitting around a board). My son can play for hours, and I know that this will be a game we play for years to come.

In response to the other reviewer about not being able to put everything (your ears) on the board at the same time as your other parts - I think that's kind of the point. It's funny, and I don't think the point is to always get all the pieces each time. It makes us laugh every time we try to put our ears on the board - my son cracks up!

I highly recommend this game for those with young kids!

My 3-year-old son adores the Cat In the Hat, so this game had that going for it before we even got it out of the box. He loves playing the game as it's intended, as well as matching the picture and letter "coins" and the letter cards to the corresponding spots on the mat. I really enjoy playing this game with him, too -- it is more exciting than the usual spin-the-spinner-and-count-the-spaces games, and I also enjoy the challenge of trying to get my ear onto the mat while keeping my feet and hands on the spots they're supposed to be! My favorite thing about this game is that it's a super-fun way to help him work on his letters. A big hit!

The first thing I noticed when I opened the box was that there was nothing to assemble. All of the cards and chips were punched out, and put it their own tiny zip-top bag. The "toy boxes" used to collect the chips were also already assembled. This seems to be unheard of now-a-days. The box the game comes in is also nicely constructed, and will help keep all of the pieces inside.

As far as game play goes, my kids really enjoyed it. What works well, is that unlike twister, each player takes a turn on his/her own. This allowed us to have a bit different rules for my younger child than my older. Per the suggestion of a previous reviewer, we had my 2.5 year old son, who is still learning to read his alphabet, just find the letter, and touch it with the proper body part, instead of trying to touch all of the letters at once. This is really helping him identify his letters. However, after watching his older sister try to touch them all at once, he tried to do it that way, too. So maybe next time we'll try to have him play that way. I also tried to play with them... it just reminded me how inflexible I am :). It is really silly trying to watch everyone try to touch everything at once.

I also liked how the chips come out displaying either the letter, or a picture. This was great because it allowed for my 5 year old to think about her reading skills when determining the starting letter of the words. For my 2.5 year old, I would just flip the chips over to display the letters.

I also liked that it's easy to make your own "house rules" for this game. Play it the way that makes the most sense for your family.

Another thing I liked is that the winner of the game is random, and not based no the number of chips received. At the start of the game, a "Secret Letter" car is selected. When the game is over, the person who won the chip with that letter, wins. If no one has that letter, then it says Thing 1 and Thing 2 win :). This works well since it would be easier for my son to get the most chips since our rules are not making him stretch to get his letters. However, it would be very easy to change the rules to make the person with the most chips win.

Overall, I think this is a great game not only because it is fun to play and educational, but the game came with no assembly needed, and a quality box with quality parts.

My 4yr old daughter received this as a gift, and we all love it. We play several times in a row as it's good holding my daughter's attention. It's good to practice letter recognition & sounds but mostly it's just fun to watch each other stretch & twist into position. Great game!

This Dr Suess game is an excellent play on the beloved classic - Twister. The mat is small enough for little bodies, and the option to use pictures or letters is great. Currently, we are on pictures, but we do try some letters each time. My daughter is four and really enjoys this game - she likes watching me try to contort on the little mat as well.