Peaceable Kingdom Hoot Owl Hoot - Cooperative Matching Game For Kids

Simple, easy, entertaining game and a great way to teach cooperation, winning and losing, and teamwork to kids at a young age. This game can also be used a matching game with the color and sun cards. It would make a great gift for any young child!

I’ve bought more than one of the Hoot Owl Hoot games as well as a few of the other Peaceable Kingdom games. I bought the first one for one set of grandkids and just bought this one for our other daughter’s son who just turned 3. This one is listed as 4+year olds, but it can be actually be used with kids a little younger since you can modify the game play by using fewer baby owls that need to get to the nest before the sun comes up. The cooperative nature of the game means that you are helping your child (or grandchild) rather than competing with him/her, while also teaching colors, rules, counting and one-to-one correspondence, directionality, etc. You’re also helping them learn that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, but you’re doing it together against the game. It also teaches strategy and as kids get older they learn how to select which color card and which owl is more advantageous to move. Great concepts, adorable characters and story, and fun!

Bought and played this with my grandsons ages 3 and 4 and it was fun. The three year old was probably a little too young to grasp the concept but he still played it and had fun doing it "his" way, lol. Perfect for the four year old. Such a cute, fun, easy game that wont take too long.

This is a phenomenal game that my kids love to play. Until now, we had only the old games like Candyland and Chutes & Ladders. We barely played games because I couldn't stand to play with them. They also tend to get competitive, which could sour even a fun game. But this game is different. It's a cooperative game in which all players, together, must get the owls (3-6, depending on difficulty) into the nest before the sun rises. There is no reading or numbers involved. The only skill needed is color matching, so even my 2 year old can play. She especially loves to get dramatic each time the sun moves closer to rising. There is also room for strategy, so the older kids can enjoy working their minds. As the owls near the nest and the sun gets closer to sunrise, you can feel the excitement in the room, something you never feel when your sibling is about to beat you at Candyland. I don't feel that the game is teaching that 'everyone is a winner, everyone deserves a trophy' because you don't always win. It's a group effort but the group can definitely lose. It teaches them that when we work together, we can accomplish so much more. As per a different review, we changed the rules slightly to allow one who has to play a sun card to refill his hand and play another card. In short- great game for ages 2-6 and maybe even older!

This is an excellent board game for young children to practice color recognition and beginning team strategy. My children at 4 and 7 enjoyed playing this game and requested it quite often during board game sessions with me. They're now 5 and 8 and they still request it from time to time. I as the adult also enjoy playing it with them. In the game players work together to move from 4 to 6 owls (depending on the desired difficulty) down the colored track to their nest before the sun comes up. Owl tokens are placed on the start places of the track. Players then draw hands of three cards. Every turn they play a card and draw another one. Most of the cards have colors on them. Whatever color is on the card played is the color any of the owls can move to. Owls must always move to the next instance of a given color on the board, unless another owl is already on that space. If the space is occupied, the owl may skip along the board to the next instance of the color. In this way players can get their owls to move quickly down the board if they work together to choose the same color in a row on their turns. Some of the cards have a sun token on them. If one of the sun cards is drawn a little sun marker is moved along a sun path at the top of the board. All the owls must make it to the nest before the sun gets to the end of the sun path. Then everyone wins. This game can be thought of as a much improved version of Candy Land. While Candy Land might be okay for two year olds and younger three year olds, this game works much better for later three year olds up through about six or seven. I wouldn't buy it for an eight year old, but older children will enjoy playing this with their younger siblings, as is the case with us. In this game there are small strategic decisions that the children can make to affect the outcome of the game. The strategy is definitely not deep, but it is at a nice level for young ones. It is definitely enough strategy to get the children thinking and practicing working together. This ups the players' higher order thought usage well beyond Candy Land, where there is no strategy involved in gameplay at all. Even with the best use of strategy in the game, there is enough luck that you will still sometimes lose (as you can see us do in our video). This is particularly the case if you play the hardest level of the game with all the owls. Of course there are other times when the luck aspect works in your favor and you still manage to win while using less than optimal strategy. All told, the game strikes a good balance between luck and strategy. The components are colorful and the illustrations are cute. All the pieces are made of biodegradable recycled cardboard. Unfortunately the cardboard for the cards is quite thin and flimsy. For that reason I knocked it down a star because if this game were to be used in a classroom I would recommend laminating the cards. Of course then those cards are no longer biodegradable, which sort of defeats one of the advertising points of the company... So to sum up, I would definitely recommend this game to both parents and teachers, of children in preschool through first grade, looking for a fun game involving color recognition and light strategy. For another great game utilizing color recognition and light strategy in a competitive, rather than cooperative, format check out Monza .

This game is really fun for all ages.

It was good quality. The students have only got to play once for a short time. I look forward to them getting to play a full game of it. I liked that the instructions were printed on the box so that they can not get lost. It looks to be a good value and educational.

My daughter chose this game for her 4-year old because all the players work together toward the goal, rather than having a winner and loses. The game has some skill involved, like color recognition and strategy.

とても楽しく遊べます。運にかかっている部分が大きいので、ゲーム結果は毎回様々だし、フクロウの数によって難易度に変化をつけられるし、カラフルでかわいいし、良い買い物でした。

Perfect for a 3 years old until 6 or 7 year old it could go. Nice for learning colors and counting. Nobidy get upset when we lose because it is a team work, we win together or we lose together.

Excelente juego para promover trabajo en equipo, a mi hija de 3 años le encantó! Se entretiene mucho tiempo, ayuda para promover la atención y respetar turnos.

Colorful, fun game that promotes cooperation and not competition. My two grand daughters, ages 4 and 5 play together as a team to get the cute little owls home before the sun comes up. They love this game and I do too! No tears. no quarreling. Just fun and learning to cooperate through play. A Peaceable Kingdom!

Great toddler and little kid game for the whole family - we love it!