Do you have a teen who's a fan of anime? Then they'll enjoy Kess Co and de.bored range of puzzles and games. Note: I received p...

Do you have a teen who's a fan of anime? Then they'll enjoy Kess Co and de.bored range of puzzles and games.

Note: I received product samples for review purpose. Any personal views expressed are always 100% my own.

After receiving the Haikyu!! 300 pc puzzle, my teen son and I spent some time putting together and really enjoyed it.


Since my son watched the anime and plays sports, this was a great puzzle for family game night. While it was a 300 piece puzzle, the puzzle size were large enough for us to find and use to complete the puzzle. We're not fans of tiny puzzle pieces.


Another thing we liked was that the puzzle pieces were large and firm, so we both could work on it. We each puzzled within certain areas, without getting in the others way.

Ironically at a certain point, my teen decided he wanted the glory of finishing the puzzle alone for bragging rights.

We enjoyed this puzzle and now we're exciting to try other anime themed puzzles.

Kess Puzzles and Games

During Toy Fair, I visited the Kess Co booth for a preview of current and upcoming puzzles and games, and here are a few of my favorites

The puzzles included current anime series like Jujutsu Kaisen, Spy-x-Family and De.Bored Original Art

The board and card games included Spy-x-Family: Mission for Peanuts, Murder We Wrote, Street Fighter V The Board Game

Learn more, visit - www.kess.co

For parents searching for activities to keep their kids engaged, creative and inspired for the summer, here are a few ideas from STEAM brand...

For parents searching for activities to keep their kids engaged, creative and inspired for the summer, here are a few ideas from STEAM brand Osmo, that involve financial literacy/entrepreneurship, geography/world travel, and food/cooking.

Just a FYI, the Osmo base is required to play these games.

Osmo Pizza Co. ($49)

For age range: 5-12+

Pizza Co. teaches kids real-world business skills by operating a pizza-making business in addition to practicing addition, subtraction, fractions, mental math, critical thinking, creative problem solving, social interaction, and communication skills. They make pizza for customers, collect payment, make change, and learn about profitability.

Box contains: pizza/tray, toppings, money tiles, stackable storage for game pieces; and Pizza Co. game app. Available for iPad or Fire.

Osmo Detective Agency ($49)

For age range: 5-12+

This globe-trotting adventure takes kids to the world’s most famous cities, where they search for clues and help solve mysteries, using a real magnifying glass and physical maps. Kids learn critical thinking, along with geography, culture and history, while searching for landmarks around the world.

Box includes: 4 double-sided maps, map holder, magnifying glass; and Detective Agency game app. Available for iPad or Fire.

Math Wizard and the Fantastic Food Truck ($59.99)

(available for iPad and Fire)

Part of Osmo’s new award-winning Math Wizard series that allows for fun, self-paced learning at home, Fantastic Food Truck features two games and focuses on teaching kids geometry through cooking using different shapes.

Players become chefs who customize dishes using several available kitchen appliances -- and a dash of magic, their special ingredient to complete their dish for a magical reaction from their customers. Unique customers appear in various stages across Spellbarow Port, each with different food preferences and a variety of exotic dish requests--from pizza to sushi, sandwiches, pastries and more!

Box contains: 1 Playmat, 1 Food Truck Manual, and 58 Geometric tiles.

Learn more, visit - www.playosmo.com

Family game night is usually about having fun while rolling dice and flipping cards. But it can also be a chance to sneak in fun and educati...

Family game night is usually about having fun while rolling dice and flipping cards. But it can also be a chance to sneak in fun and educational learning.

Note: I received product samples for review purpose. Any personal views expressed are always 100% my own.

To help me do this, I received a few AMIGO Games for review and used them to "play games" with my son and other kids.

The games I received included:

• Eye Sea: The Creative Thinking Game - Players flip over nine cards, then combine any two to create a saying, phrase, movie title, word, song lyric, slogan...any well-recognized combination of words.


• Connect the Thoughts: Matching and Thinking – Starts as a matching game and ends as a thinking game as players collect cards that connect. Each player places one card face up, then races to find other cards with a matching image.


• Fruit Punch: Spot Five and Bop the Banana - Players inspect the cards as they’re flipped to find five of the same fruit, then race to squeak the banana.

I thought the games were a great fit, since they were both interactive and appropriate "thinking" challenges for the kids. The kids loved playing because they had to "think" in different ways to figure out each game.

They would get so excited when they "matched" items on the cards or "link" photos together to make a word or statement.


While gaming can be competitive, with these AMIGO Games the kids ended up helping each other figure things out and were excited to play more then once. So family game night went longer then usual, since the kids didn't want to to stop.

So if your looking for games to add to your family collection, get a few AMIGO Games since they have a fantastic collection of family, kids, and strategy games.

Many of which have 5 Rules or Less. They’re easy to learn and fun for families to play with their kids.

To learn more, visit - www.amigo.games

Now that my son is in preschool, I've started looking for products to help him learn the basics of reading and writing. During the 201...

Now that my son is in preschool, I've started looking for products to help him learn the basics of reading and writing.

During the 2013 Toy of the Year Awards Event, I learned about Zingo! Sight Words and was sent one to review from ThinkFun

Note: I received a product sample for review purpose. Any personal views expressed are always 100% my own.

My Review

One of the things that I really liked about Zingo! Sight Words is how compact it is. The word tiles fit into a holder and can be slipped back into a slot if they dont match a section on the card.

Check out my demo video below to learn more about Zingo! Sight Words



For the game, the word themselves are basic everyday words, so there easy for my son to recognize and start memorizings. My son enjoyed finding and matching words.

I enjoyed adding words to his vocabulary that he can use to start the basics of reading and writing.

Zingo! Sight Words ($10)

Learning and mastering sight words - the most frequently used words in the English language and approximately 50-75% of all written material - is a key step in becoming a successful, fluent reader.

In Zingo! Sight Words, the words used in this game have been specially selected by leading educators as the most fundamental for reading development. For Pre-K - 1st grade, 2 or more players

To learn more, visit - www.thinkfun.com