Leave it to Thinkfun to create a way to combine a puzzle and word-search for kids as young a 6 years old, embedding language and reading skills along the way. Just fit the colorful Tetris-style puzzle pieces over the letters on a grid to spell words forwards or backwards. The 40 single-player challenges progress in difficulty as words become more complex as well as the clues. “Find” clues start with a list of the exact words you are searching for and progress to pictures of the words, and harder “hints” that you are looking for words in a category such as candy, related to a cactus (plant, spine, dry, or ouch) or go with step (mom, foot, stool and two). Although Pathwords Jr is designed for one player, I found that doing the task together provides a lot of conversation as kids race to find the words. With all the pieces housed in a clever slide-open container, this game is perfect for travel or to throw in a therapist’s bag to liven up language lessons.
Available at Amazon: Click here
