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Players: 2-4 (ages 4+)
Playing Time: About 15 minutes
As a kid, I loved Stan and Jan Berenstain’s Berenstain Bears books. With a little help from Mama Bear, Papa Bear, Sister Bear, and Brother Bear, I learned all about things like friendship and sharing and honesty. Now kids can learn the same lessons while making their way around the game board in the new Tales to Play game, The Berenstain Bears Learn to Share.
The Berenstain Bears Learn to Share Game is a pretty basic board game. Each player gets a character pawn (shaped like Brother Bear, Sister Bear, Cousin Lizzie, or Cousin Freddie) to move around the Bear Country game board. When it’s your turn, you roll the die (using the cute tree house dice slide). If the die shows a colored shape, you move your bear to the next matching colored shape along the way. But if the die shows a bear face, you’ll have to draw a card. If you roll a smiling Brother Bear, you draw a Do Something Nice Card, which rewards you for sharing or spending time with your family or helping a friend, but only on one condition: you have to be willing to share that card with one of your opponents. If you roll a frowning Mama Bear, on the other hand, you draw a Get in Trouble Card, which punishes you (causing you to move backward) for pushing or teasing or watching too much TV.
Players continue moving along the board until the first player reaches the finish line to win the game.
Since it’s designed for preschool-age players, The Berenstain Bears Learn to Share Game is about as simple as it gets. There aren’t a lot of complex rules to learn, strategies to devise, or obstacles to overcome—just colors to match and some good deeds to learn. Kids will love the colorful game board—complete with images from their favorite books—as well as the character pawns and the tree house dice slide, which (when it works as it’s supposed to) makes rolling the die a special treat.
At the same time, though, it’s also an educational game, teaching young players about colors and shapes while throwing in some valuable lessons about being a good little bear (and teaching that being a naughty bear comes with consequences).
The game does have a few minor flaws—like the cards, which are a little too small and flimsy for young players’ hands. Some of the rules, too, are a bit ambiguous. But, with a little help from Mom and Dad, young players will enjoy competing to be the best little bear they can be as they race to the finish line. And even though it’s a super-simple board game—without any twists or challenges—parents will love reuniting with their favorite childhood characters, too.
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