Like bees around a honey pot! (ELC Honey Bee Tree)

Member Name: kingfisher111

Product:	ELC Honey Bee Tree
Date:	30/04/09 (318 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great game for kids

Disadvantages: tricky to set up

When I was a little girl I had the game of Ker PLunk which I absolutely loved. The idea was that you had a plastic tube. Halfway down the tube you had a load of holes for which you pushed through thin plastic sticks which formed a sort of floor. On top of these sat loads of marbles which you had to try to keep there as you removed the sticks, It was very noisy but a lot of fun!

When shoppong for my daughter's fourth birthday I spotted this honey bee tree in the Early Learning Centre and as I was reminded of Ker Plunk, I bought it for her. In many ways it is similar to my childhood game but is much more attractive to look at. Instead of the plastic tube, sticks and marbles, you have a honey tree, long leaves and bees. When you first play the game you have to assemble it which is a little time consuming but not difficult. The three main components are a base, a tree trunk and a see through honey pot. These all fit together to form a pretty sturdy playing piece. Alongside these there are thirty two leaves. They come attached to a plastic template and you have to twist them off. It was a little fiddly for us adults but my five and four year old daughters found it quite difficult. At least you only have to do this the once!

Setting up the game also takes some time as you have to put the base together and then you have to feed all the leaf twigs through. It's quite easy at first, but the more leaves that are in place, the harder it is to thread through the remaining ones. This definitely calls for a bit of adult intervention. In the end, the first time we played the game we only managed to put in about twenty six of the thirty two leaves before we gave up. The leaf sticks are also quite flimsy which means that it's hard to push them through in a straight line. They are supposed to poke out a hole opposite where they have been pushed in but these holes are quite small, again making it almost impossible for little ones to do. This was frustrating for them as they really wanted to help with this setting up. Once all of the sticks have been inserted you can pour the cute little plastic bees on top - there are thirty of these!

You are then ready to play the game and a fun way suggested to decide who starts is to see who is wearing the most yellow and black! Up to four players can play and they each need to have a number from one to four. The tray at the bottom is divided up into four sections with these corresponding numbers and when it is your go, you turn the part of the tree that has a gaping hole at the bottom to face your section. It's actually quite hard to move this round and this was another time when you really needed an adult to do it. Each player, on their turn, slowly and carefully pulls out a leaf hoping against hope that they are not going to dislodge any of the bees!IF they do and they are very unlucky the bees will fall into their tray section and these will count against them. The winner will be the person who has managed to capture the least number of bees!

My daughters really enjoyed this game and it's particularly good for them to try and develop a steady hand. My five year old was much better at this than her four year old sister. There was much hilarity when the bees fell down especially when Mummy or Daddy got them! It's also a game that as you get to know it better you learn to be a bit more strategic. My youngest daughter just pulls leaves randomly but I have noticed that her sister is starting to look more carefully and think which might be the best leaves to pull out. It's also a good game to encourage turn taking and at the end it helps with counting as we need to count up how many bees each player has collected. Above all though it's just a game to really enjoy together.

I am really pleased with this game and it seems absolutely right in its suggested age range of between three and eight years. I do wish that the set up was just slightly easier because I can't see the girls being able to do this without our help, and with the best will in the world, there's not always time to sit down and play games with them when they want. However, once set up they probably can get on on their own although I suspect there's a good chance they might make their own rules up sometimes! Anyway you could aways decide to reverse the game and say that it is the player with the most bees wins!

Overall this is an excellent game and considering that I only paid £6 for it in ELC, I think that it is very good value for money!

Summary: Fun game