We love playing games at our house! It’s always fun to add a new game to our already overflowing game cabinet especially when it’s a fun one like Bananagrams: My First Multi-Award Winning Kids Spelling Game.

This new game is marketed just for your emerging reader who may be beginning to read. I have used it mostly with my preschooler who is just making the connection that each letter makes its own sound. The tiles are chunky tiles making it easy for little hands to grab and manipulate.

Like the original Bananagrams game, this game comes in the iconic banana packaging. Instead of being a ripe yellow case this one is green for the ripening reader. The game set includes 80 single-letter tiles along with special combo-letter tiles for vowel teams, word families, and diagraphs. The game only includes lowercase letters and has a built in elevated baseline to represent proper letter orientation. Another great feature is that the tiles are color-coded. Vowels are always yellow, and the consonants are different colors. Letters that are easily reversed are completely different colors to help with letter confusion.

My son and I play with this game at least 3 days a week! I love his enthusiasm for learning his letters and sounds. By using this game weekly, he can now name 18 letters and consistently tell me the sound of about 10 of those letters. That type of progress makes this Mama happy! Next school year I plan to let my 3rd grader use the Bananagrams tiles while she is practicing her spelling word list. She is a tactile learner so I know being able to manipulate the letter tiles will help her master her weekly spelling list.

Not only does this game make learning easy, it is a lot of fun too! I recommend this game for Preschoolers and up. This would make a great birthday or holiday gift. I know what I’ll be sending my nieces and nephews for Christmas this year!

-Product review by Jacquelin Caffey, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, July, 2018