Who can pass up a gumball machine, especially one that teaches spelling and vocabulary? Parents went, “Wow!” when they opened the box to find the big, thick magnetic game board, with signature SimplyFun quality. This visually inviting game consists of 2 stages. Players move their coin tokens to collect letter gumballs, removing the letter you just left on your next move. Follow the visual directions on the letter tile where you landed, deciding between four movement options. Once you’ve collected as many letter tiles as you can, it’s time to build words that will earn the most points to win. In the first stage, players are using short term memory, visual spacial, and spelling skills as they plan their moves according to what letters they want to collect. One player said, I have to use my memory as I am thinking of possible words while collecting letters. It gets harder to find that optimal letter as more and more gumballs are removed. We found ourselves building prefixes and suffixes, and parts of compound words while collecting letters, getting ready for the word-building stage of the game. Word game lovers really got into the second half of the game, trying to maximize the length of words and use of bonus high-counting letters to make their words. There is so much language learning and thinking involved in this clever game of strategy and word building to challenge and stretch young minds. The whole family can enjoy playing together too!