Challenge Yourself with Ani-gram-it Board Game

Challenge Yourself with Ani-gram-it Board Game

My family loves playing board games during the holidays.  We actually have a game night on Christmas Eve with everyone.  It’s a fun way to get the kids mind off of waiting to open gifts and the adults have fun trying to beat each other out.  I received an Ani-gram-it Board Game from na2ure for review purposes.  Any opinions expressed are my own.

Science lovers will really enjoy this game.  The whole game is about creating an animal using the tiles.  It’s like the concept of Scrabble except you have to know your animals.  The titles have either words on one side or photos on the other.  When you play it up to you to choose what side of the tiles you play with.  When I play with my kids I like to use the pictures because they are children they don’t always know the words but with the photos they can easily determine those animal parts.  Like most other board games there are levels of play so players of all ages can enjoy the game.  My sister who loves Science loved the game the most.  I would say it’s a game for kids that are about eight or nine years old.  At that age they understand the rules better.  Perfect for family game nights and great for holidays.  This is a great game for any family that likes spending time together playing board games.

About Ani-gram-it:

The Ani-gram-it Board Game (For ages 8+, retail $59.99, available at www.na2ure.com)

Colorful, high resolution photographs bring animals to life in the Ani-gram-it Board Game, a finalist in the 2014 NYC Design Awards and a Forbes Top 10 game for Summer 2014.  The game mimics and celebrates the great beauty of the animal kingdom and is as much an objet d’art as a revolutionary educational tool. Sturdy, smooth and gorgeous, the game is made up of 100 chit board tiles that pop out against the dark grey board. Everything—tiles, board and box—is matte laminated.

Just as the classic board game Scrabble uses letter tiles that create words, the object of Ani-gram-it is to “build” animals using tiles of their body parts. Each tile is double-sided, featuring the name of a body part on one side and a vivid color photograph depicting that body part on the other. Any given body part will feature on multiple tiles, each depicting a different animal from across the animal kingdom. For instance,an “eye” tile may feature the eye of a tiger, a bird, a fish or a toad.  Players may then use any “eye” tile to build an animal. Children either build new animals on each turn or expand on ones that have already been played.

As they play, children will not only build a comprehensive knowledge of biology, but will also develop a deep, dynamic appreciation for the beauty and creativity of the natural world.

About na2ure:

na2ure is a new line of beautifully designed physical and digital games that teach science through play. Unlike other educational games on the market, na2ure is based on a platform that works with children’s natural intelligence to unlock what they already know and connect new knowledge into a growing network mirroring the interconnectivity of  the natural world.

Alex Wolf and Dr. Vijal Parikh are respectively a Rhode Island School of Design-trained artist and a Cornell-trained neurobiologist, who are creating a way to teach kids about nature and inspire the next generation of scientists, designers and artists. Wolf wanted to provide her daughter with quality toys that would teach her about plants and animals in a more advanced, thought provoking manner than other games on the market. She began to develop toys and games at each stage of her daughter’s development until she had a group of games and a thesis behind them. With prototypes in place, she teamed up with Parikh to develop a series of smart and beautiful games employing a scientifically rigorous classification that teaches about the animal kingdom in a way that mimics nature’s inherent aesthetic design.

Other offerings from na2ure:

Ani-gram-it To Go (for ages 5+, retail $19.99, available at www.na2ure.com)

Ani-gram-itTo Go is the board game in miniature—the animal kingdom in 2.5 x 2.5 x 1.4 inches. Perfect for travel and impromptu sessions of biology, Ani-gram-it To Gocomes complete with 100 laminated, color-coded cards and can be played on a table, the floor, the grass, a picnic blanket or any other number of spaces. It’s a great fit for the whole family, with little ones learning to name body parts and recognize different animals before they can even play.

Ferret (For ages 5+, iPad only, free on the App Store with an opportunity to purchase more animals for $2.99)

ferret, a winner in Digital Experience, Mobile at the 2014 NYC Design Awards,is an iPad app that teaches kids all about animals, from anatomy to habitat to behavior. Game play challenges children to describe animals’ anatomies from the inside out, using intuitive building blocks. Each tap and swipe leads to new discoveries and reinforces how animals are classified in the natural world.

Animals—including humans and especially kids!—learn by seeing. na2ure has gone all out to make ferret the most visually stunning science app on the market. ferret features elegant design, vivid color coding, high resolution photography and both video and icons that explain scientific classification in descriptive, plain English. ferret is based on a new “periodic” style table for biology icons created by founder Alex Wolf. The icons fit together like a puzzle that players unlock with the right answers. Some pieces of the puzzle are easier to unlock than others, and while getting them right is fun, learning is equally exciting.

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