Baker's Dozen review

It can be hard to choose toys that are both educational and actually toys our children LIKE to play with. A website called ebeanstalk is dedicated to selecting good, safe learning toys and 5 year old toys. They sent me a game to review, called Baker's Dozen from Playroom Entertainment, who makes great educational toys.

We were all super excited when this game arrived in the mail, and just look how cute the packaging is! Totally engaging. The kids wanted to play right away. It's recommended for ages 8-adult, but Caris is only 6 and she picked up on it very quickly. Canaan likes to play with us too even though he doesn't understand the rules yet.

The kids describe this game as sort of a cross between dominoes and skip-bo. The basic idea is to use up all of your cards and end up with the least amount of points at the end. Watch out or you might get waylaid by moldy donut cards!

What's educational about a bunch of donuts, you ask? Each pile created by the players can total up to 13 (get it, a baker's dozen?) and once it goes over, you have to collect that pile and keep it. Each donut has a value from 1-7 so each time you're going to lay down a card, you have to count or add to be sure of the pile's point value.

We took the game over to my in-laws' house and played, and a couple of the adults thought it was too childish to be fun for adults, but the rest of us really enjoy it. We have played this game at least 20 times in the week we have had it. I will admit that the first time we played, Mommy got a big donut craving so we had to pile in the car and go get some. LOL

After being charmed by the cute packaging, we decided later that the cards would do better to be packaged in a flat box instead of this type, because the tabs at the top got ripped by little hands. Thanks to a certain 9-year-old's crafty ingenuity, it's all repaired.

All in all, a great game that is fun, funny (the moldy cards get high marks for hilarity from my kids), strategic and smart!