Flexible Parenting Reviews

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Thursday, May 8, 2008

Rapelli Review

I'm always looking for new games to play with my kids and I'm also a big fan of Discovery Toys. Therefore, when The Parent Bloggers Network was looking for people to review Rapelli, I thought it was a great fit.

Rapelli is one of their Bamboo collection games meaning that it's made out of all natural bamboo. Basically it consists of two half cylinders that you press together together to form a tree. It takes about two seconds to assemble it. The pieces consist of 18 caterpillars in 6 different colors. Each caterpillar has 6 sections which alternate between natural color bamboo and the designated color to be easy to see. There are also two dice made out of bamboo. One is a colored die, and the other is an action die. This games is for 2-6 players.

Each players picks caterpillar colors. If there are only two players, each player picks 3 colors. If there are 6 players, each player only gets one color. A player rolls both dice at once. The action die tells the player what to do, and the colored die tells the player which color caterpillar to do it too. If the color die turns up blue, for example, and the action die has a single arrow pointing forward, the player chooses one blue caterpillar in the "tree" and pulls it one section forward. If there are two forward arrows, the caterpillar gets pulled two sections forward. Likewise if there's one arrow pointing backwards, the catapillar is moved back one section. If someone rolls a "J" on the action die, the caterpillar is completely removed. Although thee are little plastic pieces between the caterpillar sections to make it possible for a child to pull only a single section at a time, the alternating colors make it easy. The object of the game is to be the first person to have all your caterpillars removed from the tree.

The game is actually pretty simple and is marketed for kids 4 and up. So what's my honest opinion? Let's start with the positive. It's extremely well made. Everything is sturdy and the caterpillars even bend back and forth. They must have elastic in their bodies. They are also really cute. The pictures on the dice are easy to read. I also thought the directions were pretty straight forward. They are also printed on good quality glossy paper which I really appreciated because I've noticed with other games that the directions tend to get pretty mangled. Overall the quality is superb.

I played this game a few times with my 4.5 year old. Then I brought the game over and played it with my friend's almost 5 year old and her 3.5 year old. All three found the game to be too long. The directions say it lasts about 15-20 minutes. The kids always lost interest by the end and wanted to play with the caterpillars. It is also possible to increase the length of the game when it is necessary to push the caterpillars back in. (It is kind of like drawing a picture card in Candyland that brings a piece back to the beginning of the board.)

However, I would still highly recommend this game for several reasons. First of all, I think it teaches great concepts like playing with multiple dice and how to distinguish between forward and backwards. When you have many players, the child has to strategically decide which catepillar they should take, so as to optimize their chances of wining. Second, it's a really unique game, and, in addition to being well made, it is really cute. The kids loved playing with the caterpillars. Finally, my friend pointed out that this is an awesome game for traveling. Travel-sized games tend not to be as much fun as the standard-sized ones. This game would go well on an airplane. The cylinder breaks down into two pieces that you can stick in your purse with the caterpillars either poked through them or in a ziplock bag with the dice. The pieces don't really roll. Plus when the kids tire of the game, they tend to be completely captivated by the adorable caterpillars.

Personally I would change the age of this game to five and up although I feel that it really is a great game for kids that are probably at least 6. If you're looking for a game for a 6 year old or older, I would highly recommend this. This is available at the Discovery Channel Store.

posted by Alex Elliot @ 8:52 PM 0 comments

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Name:	Alex Elliot
Home:	MA, United States
About Me:	Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 4 year old and a 1 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
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