We received a free copy of Rhino Hero Junior from HABA when my toddlers were 20 months, and I let them unbox and unpunch it. The game comes with a lot of thick cardboard pieces, which my kids loved punching out. One also enjoys putting the pieces back into the punchboard, so I’ve saved some punchboard for that.

Building Site is a memory game where you’re gathering materials in the correct order to build a house. There’s a little toy dump truck that you move around to collect the pieces, and the house is made up of little wooden blocks.

by Ambie Valdés

Hungry as a Bear is a dexterity game where you feed different colored cardboard food tokens to a Bear. There’s a big cardboard plate and spoon that you use, and the bear stands up in the box and has a cut out mouth like a carnival game.

by Ambie Valdés

Tidy Up! Is a game where you have cardboard squares representing different types of toys - stuffed animals, vehicles, or blocks. The box itself has a storage shelf of cardboard with slots in it, so you take a piece and put it into the correct slot to match the type of toy.

by Ambie Valdés

Teddy’s Colors and Shapes has boards with different cut out shapes and wooden pieces of different shapes and colors. You roll a die that’s either a color or a shape (depending on which mode you’re playing) and then get one of those colors or shapes and place them into a corresponding cut out. 

by Ambie Valdés

Here, Fishy, Fishy! Is a game that uses the box to hold different colored wooden fish with magnets in them. You roll a colored die and use a fishing rod to get that fish, and then you place a matching colored cardboard piece in your scoreboard, trying to fill it with all the colors.

by Ambie Valdés

First Orchard is a cooperative game where you’re trying to get all the fruit of four different colors into the basket before the crow reaches the end of the path. Each turn you roll a die and put that color fruit into the basket. If the basket is rolled you get to choose the color, and if a crow is rolled you move the crow. It’s good for learning colors and simple strategy with the choosing of the colors.

by Ambie Valdés

As some of you may know, I am a mother of 17 month old twin boys (at the time of writing this). My husband and I had a decent collection of children’s games from before our babies were born, but the only game we had for toddlers was Go Away Monster!, which is labeled ages 3+ on the box. We'd played it with our friend’s daughter when she was a little under 2, but we wanted to get more games for toddlers. We found out that there are very few games for children under 3 years (probably due to babies putting everything in their mouths). But during a sale when my babies were ~14 months, we bought a bunch of games from HABA’s My Very First Games line, which are all for ages 2+. Over the past few months I've slowly been introducing the games to them, and I wanted to share how we've been playing them and how my twins enjoy them!

The games we bought are First Orchard, Here, Fishy, Fishy!, Building Site, Tidy Up!, and Hungry As A Bear. We also received Teddy’s Colors and Shapes as a gift. Due to the many cardboard pieces and more difficult gameplay, I haven’t had my babies play with Building Site and Hungry As A Bear yet, but the others they have “played” and love!

In each game review, I’ll go over how I play the game with my twins, which components I keep in the box, and a ”Chew Test“ for the components.

Ambie, Cassadi, and Crystal discuss some games they've played recently, including Spirit Island, First Orchard, and The 7th Continent. We then talk about ethics and bias in board game media. In this week's "Board Game Etymology" segment, Crystal discusses the origins of the word "adventure."