Ring Bling

By Super Duper Publications
Price $29.95
Age 5+

The simplest games are often the best. When that simplicity yields lots of fun and creativity while promoting the development of essential skills, you've got a real winner. In Ring Bling, students learn to follow directions (and indirectly learn how to formulate them). Each player receives a given number of rings and a different color Happy Hand that stands upright on the table. Players take turns drawing an activity card from the 50-card deck and following the directions on it. If successful, he or she spins the spinner and collects one or two rings (or gives one away) as indicated, sliding them onto the appropriate happy hand. The first player to reach a designated number of rings, wins. The card deck contains three types of directions - basic, conditional, and temporal. A basic direction is the simplest, with no order or conditions involved ('Talk like a pirate's parrot.') Conditional directions always contain some form of what is commonly referred to as an if-then statement. It is only when the 'if' part of the direction is true ('If lemons are yellow, make a funny face') that the second part is executed. Temporal directions involve two actions to be taken, one of which is to be done either before or after the other ('Before you drink your milk, eat a very crunchy cookie.') With 50 rings included and three game variations in the instructions, kids will have hours of laughter-fueled fun and learning.