Games and Puzzles

The Djeco Silhouette Puzzle range is a collection of thick cardboard jigsaw puzzles for children. They vary in complexity with 24 piece ones for 3 year olds to 54 piece ones for 5+ years old.  They have beautiful child-friendly illustrations, often with a fairytale theme.  The pieces are large, two to three inches across, and so easy for children to grasp but not so easy to lose. The puzzles come in gorgeous distinctively shaped packaging but the puzzles themselves are rectangular.

This one is a 54 piece puzzle for 5 year olds and features a princess in a carriage arriving at her castle.

37 x 40cm - 14" x 16"

Age suitability - 5+

DJ07254

.

The Djeco Silhouette Puzzle range is a collection of thick cardboard jigsaw puzzles for children. They vary in complexity with 24 piece ones for 3 year olds to 54 piece ones for 5+ years old. They have beautiful child-friendly illustratations, often with a fairytale theme. The pieces are large, two to three inches across, and so easy for children to grasp but not so easy to lose. The puzzles come in gorgeous distinctively shaped packaging but the puzzles themselves are rectangular.

This one is a 54 piece puzzle for 5 year olds and features a castle full of fairies.

40 x 37cm - 16" x 14"

FSC™-certificated cardboard and paper.

Age suitability: 5+ years.

DJ07246

.

The Djeco Silhouette Puzzle range is a collection of thick cardboard jigsaw puzzles for children.  They vary in complexity with 24 piece ones for 3 year olds to 54 piece ones for 5+ years old.  They have beautiful child-friendly illustrations, often with a fairytale theme. The pieces are large, two to three inches across, and so easy for children to grasp but not so easy to lose. The puzzles come in gorgeous distinctively shaped packaging but the puzzles themselves are rectangular.

This one is a 54 piece puzzle for 5 year olds and features an explorer with his pet monkey on his shoulder traipsing through the jungle.

40 x 37cm - 16" x 14"

Age suitability: 5+ years.

.

 

 

100 piece jigsaw puzzle showing a boy bobbing along the surface in a little sailing boat with all manner of sea creatures in the water below him.

Completed puzzle measures 50 x 40 cm. 

100 cardboard pieces.  Also includes a handy poster showing the same scene.

Age suitability: 6+ years.

Rummikub is a tile game and claims to be the UK's no.1 family stategy game.  The tiles are numbered 1 to 13 in four colours. Each player starts with fourteen tiles and tries to discard them in sets, three or more of the same number but in different colours, or runs, three or more consecutive numbers in the same colour. The first to clear his tiles is the winner.

Rummikub was invented in Romania 70 years ago by Ephraim Hertzano following the Romanian government's decision to ban card games.  It works on a similar principle to a central European card game called Vatikan, played with two packs of cards, with tiles substituting for cards.  Initially Mr Hertzano made every game himself, carefully cutting and painting each tile by hand in his little workshop.  Word spread about the game and it slowly began to be exported.  In 1977, it became one of the best-selling games in America.  In 1980 it won Game of the Year in Germany and other awards in Holland and Poland in subsequent years. It is now exported to more than 50 countries from a high-tech factory in Israel still run by the Hertzano family.

2 - 4 players.

Age suitability: 7 - Adult

Here is an excellent youtube video explaining how to play:

Outfoxed is an excellent cooperative deduction game.  Someone has stolen Mrs Plumpert's prize pie and you and the other players have to work out which fox is the guilty one. At each roll of dice, you get a chance of finding a clue or revealing a suspect.  If you are unlucky or you make a mistake, the fox moves three steps closer to getting away.

Children like this game because it's fun.  Parents like it because it also encourages the children's logic and memory skills.

Each game takes about twenty minutes.

Age suitability: 5 +

2-4 players

Here is an excellent review on Youtube from Tom Vasel of the Dice Tower:

.

.

Go round the board and pick up cheese pieces without getting caught in the trap. First mouse to get six cheeses wins.

Board requires adult assembly.

2 - 4 players

Age suitability: 6+

.

Children can play darts without damaging themselves or the plasterwork with this magnetic darts set.

Two levels of difficulty: on one side is a large conventional target with smaller targets on the rear.

Comes with six darts which you lob gently at the board.

Board measures 65 x 44 cm but rolls up for easy storage.

Age suitability: 4-8 years.

This game was 'Game of the Year' in 2017. Superficially it is quite simple.  Everybody starts with a castle, around which you build your kingdom.  Then you choose your dominoes. On these are pictured the type of lands you will have in your kingdom.  So you might have a domino with a square of forest at one end and water at the other, or another with meadow at both ends. After you have chosen each domino, you lay it around the castle and, like in dominoes, you can only put a farmland domino next to another farmland and so on. At each step your kingdom gets bigger.  The aim though is to build as big an area of each type of land as you can within your kingdom. So you score more points if you have a block of five squares of farmland together than you would if those five squares were split. Once you have all placed your dominoes, that's the end of the game and you have to total the points.

Each round takes about 15 minutes.

2 - 4 players

Age suitability: 8 +

.

 

 

 

 

C