My younger brother, who has learning difficulties, loves playing games. Normally we play dungeon crawlers or storybook style games where he gets to roll dice and bash monsters. But occasionally I like to throw in an educational game and see if he can develop some new skills. This year my attempt to do this was Concept Kids.
In Concept Kids the kids, or in this case, my little brother, takes on the role of game master, describing an animal shown on a card to the adults who have to try and guess what animal is being described. The descriptions are done by placing transparent orange plastic squares around images that show a variety of attributes, such as colour, size, number of legs, habitat, mode of transportation etc.
The game is fully co-op. The kids get to practice describing the animals and the adults have fun trying to work out the descriptions… or at least that’s how it is supposed to be played. After the first game, the adults decided to make the game fully competitive, the first person to buzz in with the correct answer scored the point and the most points wins… which to be fair, is a more fun game!
Concept Kids worked wonderfully and it was great to see Andrew click, once he got the idea, he really got the idea. His clues were accurate, most of the time, he still struggled with the difference between big and small, but he was so happy placing out his clues that often he wanted to finish placing them out even after the correct answer had been given.
This is a game I can easily see him playing with his younger niece and the two of them having a great time. But it will also help him with his communication skills, to be able to describe something in multiple different ways. If you have a young family and your children love talking about animals then I can’t recommend Concept Kids highly enough.
On the second day of Christmas, Santa gave to me... A two legged critter...