When few weeks ago I was contacted by Everyday Educational about the chance to test their new educational games for kids and toddlers, I happily said yes as both my daughters are big fans of such type of games. On top of that, they also get bored easily, so the more games I can have to help them stay away from the tv, the better it is! Another reason why I accepted, is because of course I looooove to review new products and let you all know about it, so keep reading if you would like to know about the first game from Everyday Educational that we tried: Matchimal, an exciting and educational matching animal puzzle!
Matching games are a big thing in my house and we have many different ones; same with puzzles, that we play with at least once per week. Because of this, it was pretty easy to introduce Chloe, my youngest daughter, to the fun educational game Matchimal. The game is intended for toddlers and kids 3 years and up, however even Chloe that will be 3 years in a bit more than a month, found Matchimal a fun matching puzzle game to play.
While for older children the game might be pretty easy to play with from the start, and they can find themselves the right strategy for them to play while also having fun, I found that for Chloe it was a bit too confusing and overwhelming to have a free play with it. The first time we used it, we were pretty excited and eager to play with it, so we threw all the pieces on the table, scattering them around. Even if we definitely had fun, I also noticed that it felt too overwhelming to have 52 puzzle pieces, that she never seen before, all mixed up all over the table.
From the second time that we played with Matchimal, I decided to try something different and I separated all the pieces, putting half on the right and half on the left of the table, leaving an open space in the middle for Chloe to put the pieces together. Instead of mixing all the pieces together, I made sure to have all those with the big letters on one side and all those with the full words on the opposite side. This way when she picked a piece from one of the sides, she only had to look on the opposite side with half of the pieces, reducing her stress and the feeling of being overwhelmed. As Chloe gets older, we will try different play, until reaching a total free play with all the pieces scrambled all over the table.
Matchimal is a new educational game for toddlers and children, available on Amazon, that consist of 26 puzzle sets of 2 pieces each, 52 pieces in total, of thick good quality cardboard and animal themed; you can find all kids favorites from the dinosaur to the giraffe and even the unicorn! The puzzle pieces are of the perfect size for a child’s hand, and the animals names are easily readable. It’s a great communication and language tool, a learning game for motor skills development. If you would like to read more about Matchimal, or purchase it, CLICK HERE to open the product page! Feel free to leave me a comment here on the blog, or on Instagram, to let me know if you purchased it and how you liked it! The more feedback we can give a company, the better it is for them to keep providing better products to us and our children! Stay tuned for more reviews about quality educational games for toddlers and kids, and much more!
