Along with enjoying the games components through Free Play, there are three ways to play Animal Upon Animal Junior. Mountain: You may place an animal such that it’s touching the mountain panorama (or an animal already touching the mountain panorama). The set up time in the game last as long as it takes to place the alligator in the center of the table and hand all the players their set of animals. Just like HABA’s other My Very First Games, the rule book suggests lots of different ways to play, starting with letting your toddler freely play with the pieces, maybe naming what some animals are and trying to fit them together in different ways. Services may take longer, especially at peak times, eg the run up to Christmas or due to local bank holidays.

No sooner has the frog hopped onto the back of the kangaroo than the hedgehog gets ready to jump up and join him. I think this was an ideal rule mechanic for Animal Upon Animal because otherwise one collapse would knock a player out of the game and that makes the game less competitive and less fun for all players. This engaging game includes 13 wooden animals and is great for developing fine motor skills and introducing turn-taking. My 5-year old son loves the penguins so much that I found he had removed all four and was playing with them along with his other toys. Final Thoughts: Only issue with the animals is that the detail is one-sided which may frustrate young players.Please note that this service can not be used for oversized items (dimensions greater than 61 x 46 x 46cm) and these will need to be sent by a courier. I was surprised to find kids laughing while demoing games and that every game on display was kid friendly (that also have educational undertones as well). Players race each other to be the first to place all of their wooden animals upon the animal pile before any of the other players. I played this with three helpers: a not-quite-2-year-old, a just-turned-4-year-old, and also with Elliot. As with the other game mode, take a sun tile if no animals fell down, and whoever has the most sun tiles at the end of the game wins.

I think this would be a great first game for toddlers, and they might surprise you by coming back to it even once they’ve graduated to “big kid” games like Elliot has. Out of all three included, my favorite is probably the Colorful Raft Stack as I enjoy players having the option to choose which stack to add their animal to. Content: 29 wooden animals (1 crocodile, 4 flamingos, 4 monkeys, 4 toucans, 4 snakes, 4 camels, 4 sheep, 4 tortoises), 1 die with symbols, set of game instructions. All the animal tokens are all of a unique shape and color, wooden, and have kid appropriate details to each animal. The preschooler loved stacking the animals and knocking them down (you may remember his flavor of help from our Rhino Hero Junior review).The game is pretty straightforward; like most stacking games, you seek to stack the animals as best as you can. The last thing to highlight is that Animal Upon Animal components are awesome and the very definition of kid friendly (did you see the smiles on the animals). We always treated it like a game -as soon as he wanted to play something else we had him clean it up and put away the box so we didn’t lose all the pieces before he was 2. There’s no real player interaction beyond the animals you get assigned at fewer than four players, and other players don’t have a major impact on your game beyond placing animals that you have to deal with. Like other HABA rule books, the design uses straight-forward language, just the right amount of diagrams, and most importantly is easy to digest and learn which makes teaching even easier.

They love being able to control their turns and even though Animal Upon Animal uses a die that adds a randomization element, the outcome is controlled by the player’s actions. I like that it teaches hand-eye coordination for kids in a way that is not boring or too easy for adults. Elliot] I prefer this to the normal Animal Upon Animal, because the normal Animal Upon Animal is REALLY hard! Both in the selection of materials and in the production processes used, the protection of natural resources is a priority for HABA. In the third game, they work cooperatively to race against the crab, training their dexterity skills with play.Animal Upon Animal gives the kids a fun distraction that will test their motor skills and help improve them as they play.

In “Stacking Animal Tower”, kids flip a sun tile, then take the matching animal and add it to the stack on the MEADOW. If you do have questions the rules are three pages that you can easily reference and find an answer quickly.

Dexterity games for this age can be a great way to help kids develop those softer, more controlled movements. I think because it feels a little bit more game-like than the other My Very First Games we’ve reviewed (we did Off to Bed!