Games

The Big Book of Brain Games: 1,000 PlayThinks of Art, Mathematics & Science
$22.95
Is an excellent resourse to challenge our students to think more analytical but without the pressure of the math test.

New Super Mario Bros
$49.99
I can't review this as an "expert gamer"--the last time I owned a game system before my recent Wii purchase was the *original* Game Boy! Part of the reason is that games are just too crazy with all of the buttons and extreme graphics. If it's not intuitive I can't really do well with it. Well, this game is old school in its functionality, but it's brand new in its "coolness!"

Playing this in multi-player mode is just the best. It is easily the most fun (and funny) game I have ever played! When Mario starts hopping on Luigi and you hear "Oh, Owww, ooh" it's a blast. When one of the characters is on the Yoshi powerup (my favorite by far) and they swallow one of their pals and spit them out again, well, it's hard to describe how fun that is. If you get a 4-player game going, it can quickly turn to mayhem as the characters start flying all over the place!

If you have ever liked the traditional Mario games, this is pure fun. You will sit down to play for a few minutes, and it will quickly turn into a few hours. I highly recommend this!

Pictureka
$22.99
Hey this game is a blast, the adults and the kids will love this game. Get it you will not be disapointed !!

Bananagrams
$14.95
This is one of those products that is so simple, and so compulsive that it makes you think "Why didn't I think of that?"

The action is fast paced, bordering on frantic. Grabbing an awkward letter out of "the bunch" can cause you to completely rearrange your anagram. An X, V, Q or J in the last tile grab can cause some of the most intense gaming that you'll find anywhere.

For those that say this game is anti-social: I do understand this criticism, but at our table moments of intense concentration were broken up with peaks of hilarity at unfortunate misspellings and words that aren't quite words. As with anything, who you're playing with has as much to do with whether or not an activity is social as the game itself does. and unlike traditional scrabble, you don't end up wanting to kill anyone for taking 15 minutes to figure out where to make their next play.

The tiles feel good in the hand, and that does add to the game play. The packaging is light-hearted and seeing it on the shelf, people always ask after it.

If you're a word game family, I cannot recommend this game enough.