Top Award-Winning “Brainiac” Board Games for Girls.

November 18, 2009 by Elizabeth Donovan, M. A.
Filed under Pink Product Reviews

For many families, board games are a ‘thing of the past’, tossed by the wayside in exchange for Nintendo and Wii games. But playing an ‘old fashion’ board game with your daughter has proven to have additional benefits that electronic games do not: they promote family bonding and interaction; build brain power by requiring children to develop strategies and solutions; and provide lots of giggles and hours of fun. Somehow, within our high tech society, today’s children have lost the nostalgia of sitting together on a Friday night and trying to figure out ‘who done it’ in Clue or learning to manage money and collect rent in Monopoly.

The good news? Parenting Pink’s about to bring back brainpower and fun with the help of some award-winning board games!

I believe that one of the keys to having a strong, trusting, and healthy relationship with your daughter is through interactive play. Often, topics come up that your daughter is more willing to talk about if she’s engaged with you and parents are always pleasantly surprised at the things they learn about their children over a family game night. Encourage a love of family and learning with these educational, FUN, noggin-powering games for girls ages 4 and up. Better yet, add one of them to your holiday list this year and give the gift that keeps giving – family fun!

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You've Been Sentenced

You’ve Been Sentenced!

Do you and your daughter love a little ‘court room drama?’ Then You’ve Been Sentenced! may be exactly what you are looking for! This witty, award winning game (DR. Toy, Best Toy Award, among others) tests your ability to think quickly and analytically by creating humorous sentences you have to justify in order to gain points. The super cool pentagon shaped cards contain words, historical names, familiar places, and wild cards, that players have to make grammatically correct to justify their sentences. The game really gets exciting and silly when players have to read aloud their sentences and explain why they are grammatically correct. A jury is formed by the players and they then vote whether or not the sentence and justification are sound. There are 540 cards with over 2,500 words insure thousands of sentence combination for hours of non-repetitive, learning fun! You’ve Been Sentenced! is recommended for ages 8 and up, 30-40 min to play, and 3-10 players.

The Parenting Pink Scoop: Get ready to get downright silly while playing You’ve Been Sentenced! It’s a lot of fun and guarantees to get giggles every time. As a mom, I appreciate the educational value of this game in that it encourages children to create ‘grammatically’ correct sentences. It helps girls understand sentence structure and gives them a healthy dose of analytical reasoning as they have to ‘justify’ why they formed their sentence. The combination of grammar and analytic ability are certainly an asset to this FUN game! I also liked the fact that You’ve Been Sentenced! can grow with your child and give her new challenges and creative ways to play. Unlike many games, You’ve Been Sentenced! comes with “add-on decks” so your family can continue to play this game with new card combinations. Add-on decks like “Gourmet Cuisine, Sports Highlights, and Pop Culture” ensure that You’ve Been Sentenced! continues to provide new and fun ways to create game-playing memories!

You’ve Been Sentenced! can be found on McNeil Designs website for $24.95. Add-on decks are $7.95 each.

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SleepingQueens

Sleeping Queens.

When it comes to treating your daughter like royalty, Sleeping Queens by Gamewright has got the Midas touch! Girls ages 8 and up will love this fun, educational game that was invented by a six year old girl – now that’s brainpower! Sleeping Queens is also the recipient of Dr. Toy’s Smart Play / Smart Toy Award – a symbol that is synonymous with the best and brightest ‘brainpower’ toys.

This fun and exciting strategy card game introduces your daughter to The Pancake Queen, The Ladybug Queen and ten of their closest friends (including my favorite, The Sunflower Queen) who have fallen under under a sleeping spell. It becomes you and your daughter’s job to wake them up! But waking these queens from their royal slumbers will prove to be challenging with wicked potions and mean-spirited dragons on the loose, so your daughter will have to really use her noggin to figure out how to arouse the sleeping beauties and their royal promenade!

The Parenting Pink Scoop: Sleeping Queens is one of those rare finds when it comes to fun and challenging games that require your daughter to use her imagination and “smarts.” There are 79 cards are beautifully decorated and sturdy. The game can be played with 2-5 players and takes approximately 20 minutes. But don’t be fooled by the short game time line – girls will want to play this game over and over (mine certainly did) providing hours of fun. And for $10.99, its simply a royal steal! For additional information, please see: www.gamewright.com.

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bananagrams2

Bananagrams.

Though just the name of this game sounds delicious, the truth of the matter is that Bananagrams is fun, addictive, and brain-empowering to play! Get ready to go bananas over this “Scrabble with a twist” game for hours of family fun! Bananagrams has 144 lettered tile with each player picking a quantity from the pile. Players begin when someone declares “split”! Bananagrams is challenging enough for girls age 9 and up and, unlike Scrabble, is fast-paced with simple rules. Families will quickly find that this will become one of their favorite ‘game night’ indulgences. Bananagrams is also available online as a free Facebook Application and will be coming soon to iPhone and iTouch for girls on the go. Now that’s a-peeling!

The Parenting Pink Scoop: Did I mention brainpower? The number of words girls can spell is infinite with Bananagrams, enabling your daughter to build strong vocabulary skills and learn new words by watching what other players spell. I played this delightfully addictive game with my 6 year old and found that it was fun, challenging, and something that my daughter picked up quickly. Bananagrams’s educational value has not gone unnoticed, and they have received several prestigious awards including Dr. Toy ‘Best Products’ Winner. Who will be the ‘top banana’ at your family game night? You’ve gotta play to find out!

Bananagrams retails for $14.95 and is available at Target, Barnes & Noble and most toy specialty stores as well as directly from Bananagrams online at: www.bananagrams.com

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backseat drawing jr

Backseat Drawing Junior.

If you and your daughter are in the mood for a little drawing, lots of imagination, and tons of brain-teasing fun – then Backseat Drawing Junior is right up your ‘drawing’ alley! Out of the Box Publishing, the creators of Backseat Drawing: The Silly Game of Sketchy Directions, have introduced a ‘junior’ version of their award winning game for younger girls (ages 7 and up). This super fun game is outrageously fun while encouraging girls to ‘challenge’ themselves by honing their listening skills, sharpening their analytical reasoning (players have to use their noggin to figure out ‘how’ they are going to draw the picture), and delving into their creativity.

How the game is played: Players must race to guess the drawing done by the ‘artist’, but the artist doesn’t know what she is drawing. It’s up the the ‘director’ to tell the artist how to draw the picture without giving away the name of the item shown on the picture card. Similar to Pictionary, but with even more giggles! In addition, it’s fast paced and easy to learn (which comes in handy when teaching younger children). Backseat drawing can be played two different ways: Everybody-In or Team-Play. The Everybody-in option works well for children learning the game as it is slower paced and is played with a smaller number of players. For more of a challenge, Team-Play is recommended for older players as teams compete with each other and it can accommodate a larger number of players.

The Parenting Pink Scoop: One word – FUN! Backseat Drawing Junior is a great ‘family game night’ game because it encourages all players to speak-up and participate equally. This game requires girls to ‘think’ through how they give ‘instructions’ to the artist as they cannot use certain words. Our family had a great time laughing, drawing, and shouting out answers. Backseat Drawing Junior is $19.99 and can be purchased at Out of the Box.

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Sherlock

Sherlock.

Got a little super sleuth in your house? Then Sherlock by Playroom Entertainment may be a great option for detective. Sherlock, a 6 time award winning card game (including the Parent’s Choice Gold award), is designed to help build brainpower by improving your daughter’s short term memory, counting skills, and sense of direction.

Sherlock is like traditional Memory, but with a fun, detective twist. The game is played as Sherlock makes his way around the circle of cards searching for “clues”. Each player then tries to remember the eight objects in the face down circle of cards. Sherlock has to try to remember what object is on the card each time he stops at one. Sherlock continues to move, as long as the player guesses correctly. If Sherlock travels to a face-up card, then the player gets to keep that card. The first player to collect six cards wins. Sherlock is recommended for ages 5-9.

The Parenting Pink Scoop: We played Sherlock with my 6 year old daughter who loved it from the get-go. She especially enjoyed ‘playing detective’ and trying to remember what all of the objects were in the circle. Initially, the game was a bit easy for her, so we adjusted the amount of cards in the circle for her to ‘remember’ and found that it proved to be both fun and challenging. I liked the fact that if you have an older child with sharper memory skills, you can make the game more challenging by adding additional cards to the circle. It’s a great way to expand memory skills while having a fun time doing it! I thought the price of $9.99 or $8.95 on Amazon.com reasonable and worth every penny. This has quickly become one of my 6 year old’s favorite games and it’s sure to please your children too! For additional information or to purchase Sherlock, please see: Playroom Entertainment

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Blurt!

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Perhaps the name says it all, but Blurt! an award winning game (DR. Toy among others) by Educational Insights, is outrageously fun! This game is for children ages 7 & up, has what every family needs – a healthy dose of fun, challenge, and lots of giggles! Know the answer to “A form of energy that makes seeing things visible?” (answer: light) or “The part of the tooth projecting from the gums?” (answer: crown) then you are well on your way to lots of mind-bending fun!

The idea behind Blurt! is that players all take turns reading ‘definitions’ of words aloud and then they compete to blurt out the right answer so they can begin to move ahead on the game board. The first person or team to circle the board wins. The fun really begins when players compete to ‘blurt’ out the word first and as they get tongue-tied, so do their words!

The Parenting Pink Scoop: Blurt! is one of those games that requires not only skill, but lots of humor. I couldn’t stop laughing at the funny phrases coming out of my mouth and even found myself ’stumped’ a few times to figure out the correct word. Families will love playing this game together as it encourages lots of good ‘ol fashion interaction and lots of outrageous humor!

Blurt! is available at Barnes & Noble and Educational Insights for $24.00.