Cranium Introduces Bloom Games for Preschoolers

1/24/08 - By Anna Fader
Cranium, the innovative non-competitive game company, has just released a new line of games aimed at preschoolers. Cranium Bloom games seem to be designed to guide parents in educational interactive play with their children.

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Cranium Bloom Let's Go to the Zoo Seek and Find Puzzle is similar to a giant Where's Waldo book. You put together a puzzle of an illustrated zoo scene and then there are easy and advanced clue cards to find loads of stuff in the puzzle images. Kids get a wipe off marker to circle what they find. (This was a big draw). The easy clues just have a picture of what you have to find. The harder ones ask more conceptual problems like finding 7 things that are orange or start with the letter B. My 4 year old really enjoyed playing this game and I think he will enjoy being able to do the harder clues as he gets older. Another game in the series is Cranium Bloom Let's Play Count and Cook Game. The idea of this one is that you create a recipe with your child as you move your pieces around the board. I give Cranium credit for taking games where no games have gone before (in the kitchen), but I'm not sure this one totally works. First of all board games and cooking don't really mix. Getting the crumbs and flour and peanut butter out of the board after you play could be a bit of a problem. The game comes with a cute little cookbook, but it only has nine recipes in it and while it encourages you to add your own, it doesn't have blank pages or any way to add new recipes to the spiral bound cookbook. And, maybe it's just me, but I find it a little insulting that Cranium thinks I need help interacting with my kids in the kitchen. Cooking is a no-brainer way to interact with your kids already. They do love cooking, measuring and eating, so why complicate it with a board game? Cranium is one of the few game companies that is really doing stuff outside of the box. Our family has several of their games and we really love them all. I love to play the original Cranium game with a group of grown-ups and our kids are just getting old enough to start playing with us. My husband got me Cranium Hoopla when I was in the hospital and it's a lot of fun. You can play with two people so that's something we enjoy doing together (*Valentine's Day Present idea*). And My kids still love their Cranium Hullabaloo game which gets them moving, laughing and acting silly.