My Little Man loves board games. “Will you play a board game with me?” is a daily question in this house. I’m always on the lookout for new games that throw in a little bit of learning while still being really fun to play. So when SimplyFun offered us a copy of their board game Expanders to play and review, we were pretty excited.
Expanders is a math board game for ages seven and up. The board is made up of numbers and your goal is to cover as many of those numbers with your tokens as possible. The first player to put all of their thirty two tokens on the board is the winner. How does one get their tokens on the board, you ask? You’ve got a few ways. The best way, once the game is in motion, is to cover a number then expand on it through addition. For example, let’s say you have a 10 you can cover. Look at the numbers surrounding the 10. If you’ve got a 5, 4, and 1, and they connect in some way, you get to cover all of those.
The game is simple enough. There’s no reason a young child with basic addition knowledge can’t play this game. But the fun comes when the kids get a little older and more competitive, and figure out ways to expand that out even further. “Oh, look at this, I’ve got a 4, 1, 3, and 1 all connected to that 10. Looks like I just covered five more spaces!” Boom. You just got Expanded (I made that up, that’s not actually their catchphrase, but it works, don’t you think?). Because of this, it works for all ages above seven. This is rare and really exciting for me. It’s hard to find an educational game that is fun for all of us to play. Frankly, a simple addition game can get really boring when you’re an adult, no matter how much you love your kids and want to encourage their learning through play. I often catch myself rolling my eyes and sighing loudly when certain board games come out. This one, though, offers a little challenge even for me. Expanders doesn’t just reinforce addition facts, it encourages players to think critically and strategize.
As soon as Expanders arrived in the mail, Little Man busted into it. The game is pretty easy to set up. The numbers come in boards of two rows, which means not all numbers are going to connect to each other every time. Based on how many players you have, you can make the playing board (known as the Mainframe) bigger or smaller depending on how many boards you use. There are enough transparent colored tokens for up to four players to have thirty two. We let Little Man go first, since he was the super most excited. For the first move, you can put down one token on any open single number near you, or on two matching numbers that are either connected to each other or in the same row. From there you expand. All three of us; me, the almost 8, and almost 10 year old; all played the first round together so we could get used to it and make sure we understood the rules. It wasn’t at all hard to follow and you can finish a game in less than half an hour. After the first game, I took a break to go do the dishes and the boys played together. The rules are simple enough that they can handle it on their own, but it’s still enough fun that they didn’t feel bored
I’m so excited to find a learning game that isn’t boring or too easy. I’m now looking forward to trying out more products from SimplyFun. And SimplyFun is sweetening the pot by offering us a promo code for 15% off our first purchase. Just enter code SHREVIEW at checkout. This deal expires July 31, 2015, so order soon.
