Bring on the spotty dogs! (Spotty Dogs)

Member Name: kingfisher111

Product:	Spotty Dogs
Date:	08/02/07 (131 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: fun but educational game

Disadvantages: none!

Ever since having my two girls I have been a big fan of Orchard Toys. They are always bright and sturdy, good fun as well as helping children's development.

Spotty Dogs is a simple but fun counting game that I bought for my three year old daughter. The suggested age range is 3-6 years and that seems about right. When you open up the contents of the game you find that there is a multi coloured spinner with the numbers 1 - 6 on it and twenty four cards displaying different dogs with different numbers of spots on their backs. The aim of the game is to spin a number and then to collect a card with a dog with the same number of spots as the number spun. If all of that number have gone you cannot collect any card at all.

The end of the game is when all the cards have been collected and you have to add up your scores to find out who has won. You score by looking on the back of each card where you see a dog basket which is either empty or has anything up to three bones in it. The person who has the most bones in total is the winner! A game probably lasts about ten to fifteen minutes and is a good game to play if you want a quiet time with your child.

Obviously, the greatest benefit of playing this game is that it helps your child to count and also to help recognise the numbers on the spinner. There are two lots of counting because not only do you have to count the spots on the dog but also the bones in the basket.

The cartoon pictures of the dogs are very attractive as well. I'm not really up on my dog breeds but they do look very familiar. There are six different dogs in total with four pictures of each. Each dog always represents the same number of spots which I think is a shame because once you have played the game a few times your child will start to remember which dog has whichever number of spots and will not need to count. Therefore you would not want to play it too many times in succession.

I have to say that my daughter loves this game, and as she is now beginning to count quite well she can participate as well as anyone else. We always encourage her to say the number she sees regardless of who has spun it. (Sometimes it's hard to remember to hold back and let her do it herself as we as adults tend to take our goes very quickly!). She also counts all the spots and then loves to turn the card over to see how many bones that she has! The game is also very helpful in introducing the conventions of game playing such as taking turns. And one bonus for my daughter is that the rules state that the youngest player always goes first! As her little sister is at the moment too young, then it is always Rachel - I don't know how she'll react in a few months time when Natalie is a bit older and cam also join in!

As with all Orchard Toys, there is an educational guide on the box which tells you that it links with KS1 maths, develops personal and social skills, and encourages counting and matching. So for a very simple game it has a lot going for it. My daughter certainly agrees!

You can probably buy this game from most toy shops and iy you visit the Orchard Toys website you can see that it has a RRP of £6.00 which seems quite reasonable to me!

Summary: A great game to help develop counting