Hoot Owl Hoot!

We've been playing with the Kidwinks 7th Toy of Christmas these days. It's Hoot Owl Hoot! and my 5 year old and I love this game!

This a cooperative game by Peaceable Kingdom. I'll have to admit, considering I love to drive my older boys into bankruptcy in a hard core game of Monopoly, I really didn't have high expectations of a "cooperative" game. I was wrong!

The game works like Candyland, where you pick color coded cards ..... no reading necessary. Each players has 3 cards at a time. They can either be color cards or sun cards. The sun cards move the sun across the board, from sunset to sunrise. When you pull a sun card, you must play that first. The object of the game is to work together and move through the board, getting all your owls back to the nest before the sun rises. Since you are working together you either win together or lose together.

You strategize together to figure out how to best utilize your cards with the other players. Not only does the cooperative effort take the pressure off the idea of winning and losing, but I could see my daughter putting a lot of thought into how to use our cards together in order to get the owls as close as possible to their nest. The only "bad" thing that can happen to you in the game is to pull a sun card. We ended up cheering for each other and crossing fingers when the other was drawing a card, hoping not to draw a sun. Lots of high fives as we got our owls closer to their nest!

Depending upon how many owls you choose to play (anywhere up to 6), you are still able to lose. Its pretty hard to lose with only 3 owls, but it could be a nail-bighter with 6. You can have the lesson of sometimes losing in a game, but no one is singled out for losing. You all lose together.

The box cover includes several games made by the same company. I think any of these games would be a great gift!

You can now see all the great toys that have been picked for the Kidwinks 12 Toys of Christmas. If you are looking for fun things to do with your kids, check out Kidwinks Christmas Events listings!