Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that this is an engaging way to teach young children ages 5 through 8 how to think logically. The puzzles start easy and get progressively harder, all the while offering hints to help along the way.
Families can discuss which puzzles were the most fun. Did you like playing with the talking faces? Or how about putting together the monsters whose limbs fell off? Was there any part of this game that you didn't like?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Jinny Gudmundsen
Teaching young children how to think logically can be a challenge. GET PUZZLED for the Leapster Learning Game System can help.
By playing a series of fun puzzles, kids learn logical thinking and problem solving. The puzzles, intended for kids 5 through 8, invite children to create monsters, build structures, navigate spaceships, do word searches, assemble bridges, and design faces.
The software offers over 300 puzzles, which are divided into six different types that can be played on four levels of difficulty. Three of the levels are available at the start, and the fourth, the Superpower level, unlocks when the first three are finished.
These puzzles are great for little thinkers because they start easy and gradually get harder. For example, in the About Face puzzles, the goal is to make a group of talking faces happy by listening to their requests and then dragging the correct item over to the faces. The easiest puzzles have two colored faces, and each will request things like a specific colored hat or a triangle nose. But soon, the red face will say that it wants a hat that is not the same color as the one on the blue face, and the blue face will request a green hat. Kids will learn to apply logic in selecting the hat for the red face.
With the Critter River puzzles, kids combine pieces of a bridge in the best configuration that will allow a critter to cross from one side of a river to the other. In selecting the pieces, they must apply reasoning to solve a visual problem.
With the Monster Maker puzzles kids are shown a completed monster whose body parts fall off. By using memory, kids drag body parts back to the correct locations to reassemble the monster. While this sounds a little morbid, it isn't.
Math is the focus of the Sky High Puzzles as kids use spatial reasoning to combine different-sized boards to match the height of an already built wall. And recognizing words and their spellings is the focus of Word Bird, a group of word-search puzzles.
Cosmic Crossing combines hand-eye coordination with logic as kids direct spaceships to land on celestial bodies to establish a path to earth. The key to the puzzles is learning which bodies to avoid such as supernovas, and which to use including wormholes and nebulae that turn the spaceship ninety degrees.
Get Puzzled motivates kids to play by awarding them Puzzle Power stars. Kids are also inspired to play because the characters are zany and fun. Another nice feature is the hint button which is available for every puzzle. If kids don't get a puzzle right, it immediately resets without recrimination so that kids feel comfortable exploring and trying new theories.
If you own a Leapster, don't miss this one. Get Puzzled will get your child thinking. For another excellent Leapster game, check out Animal Genius. For a great kindergarten title on the PC, consider JumpStart World: Kindergarten
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