Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game Review!

So it's not news to me that my four year old son is struggling a bit with his writing. His reading is fine, but he just doesn't see the POINT in writing. It kind of annoys him, as it's all a bit pain. The only time I can get him to write anything at all is if it's either a birthday party list or some sort of birthday/Christmas present list. He would never ever draw or write just for the love of it, which is ironic really seeing as how I love writing so much. Having said that, my handwriting is pretty awful really, it looks like I'm writing under the influence of something. These days though, I tend to type everything anyway, which I'm pretty good at. However, although it's anyone's guess as to whether anyone in the future will write by hand at all, it's still good to learn. The problem for my son is, his fingers just aren't very strong, he's fine playing with small toys and doing things like that, but he just doesn't seem to have the dexterity to grip a pencil particularly well. I'm always on the lookout for games and activities I can do with him that will help him with this. That's where Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game from Learning Resources comes in! I was sent this a few weeks ago, and we've been playing it loads, it's a really easy, simple yet effective game for children, with or without fine motor skills problems.

Sneaky Snacky Squirrel Game by Learning Resources

As a parent, I really liked the simplistic nature of the game. Basically how it works is you all have an acorn holder that comprises various colours. You put all the acorns in the lid of the box and roll the dice. The dice then tells you what you have to do on your go. Mostly you have to use a squeezy squirrel to pick up acorns and carefully drop them in your acorn holder. The squirrel squeezer requires a certain amount of dexterity and strength to squeeze (if that makes sense) but isn't so difficult that a small child wouldn't be abele to do it. The best thing about the game is that it's so EASY, my two year old could play it (albeit without reference to the "rules" but so could my four year old, who started to appreciate some of the strategies he could use in order to win.  As a teacher, I also liked the game for things like, sharing, turn taking, strategy, fine motor skills, colour matching, all sorts really!

Son 2 aged 2 putting his acorns in his acorn holder!

Son 1 with the squeezy squirrel, matching the colours up.

I think this game would work really well either at home or in school or nursery. There are loads of elements to it so it doesn't get boring and best of all, a real range of ages can play. We had loads of fun playing this game and I would recommend it to any parent or teacher!

All thoughts are my own though Learning Resources did send me this game to review free of charge!