Since Christmas and her birthday Florence has been massively into playing board games and the like. At just three she’s the perfect age as she understands the concept of everyone having a turn and we all have great fun playing with her. It’s something we do when Jimmy has gone to sleep or is in his door bouncer so it gives her some totally undivided Mummy and Daddy time and it’s just really great fun, lovely to see her enjoy and just a great family activity. Obviously Monopoly and Scrabble aren’t quite her forte yet (although I’m sure before long she’ll join the droves of everyone else and be yet another person who I can’t beat at them) so what games do three-year olds like to play? Well we’ve found a few that we really like and one of them is the Honey Bee Tree Game from the Early Learning Centre.
It’s a very simple game of pulling plastic leaves from a plastic honey pot in a tree while trying not to disturb any of the bees within it. Up to four players of ages 3 and over can compete to see who disturbs the fewest bees by the end of the game and it’s one Florence particularly enjoys. We bought it for Christmas and she wants to play it almost daily so you can’t get a better recommendation than that now can you.
The game takes about 5 minutes to set up and is a bit too fiddly for Florence to do the leaves on her own so I would say an adult would need to be the one pushing them into the honey pot but then children could quite easily play it on their own afterwards. The tree is in three easy to push together pieces and then the bees are dropped into the honey pot on top of the leaf stems.
The set up of the game. (bag not included but I think similar is necessary to keep the bees in when not in use).
Take it in turns (with the youngest player going first as the rules suggest) to turn the hole at the bottom of the tree trunk to face the quarter of the base with the number player you are and pull out one leaf per go. As the bees are disturbed they fall down the trunk and into the section of the tray belonging to the player whose go it is. Great fun!
Florence really enjoys ‘The Bee Game’ as she calls it!
At the end of the game we count the bees back into the bag to see who has won then more often than not, we play again!
I like the fact that this game comes apart and fits back in it’s box to be stored until the next time. As I mentioned, the only thing I would change would be to add a bag to keep the bees in but all in all this is a fab game and at £12 really isn’t too bad at all! However, ELC often have fab sales and when we bought it before Christmas (and again right now actually) it was half price so really quite a bargain! At those sort of discounts it makes it a really great gift for a friend too, not breaking the bank but something that would be really enjoyed and worth having. I’m a really big fan of ELC in general and I think their games, the ones we have anyway, are brilliant!
I was not paid in any way to write this article nor was I given a product for free or asked to write about it. I chose to write this post because we enjoy the game so much.
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