Briarpatch, Criss-Cross Applesauce Game, Early Preschool Learning for Toddlers, Kindergarten and 1st Grade

Our family recently started playing Criss-Cross Applesauce, and it has quickly become a favorite for everyone, especially my 5-year-old son. Here's why we love it:Pros:Easy to Play: The game's simple rules make it easy for my son to play without much help. He loves acting out the various activities on the cards, and it's been great for building his confidence and independence.Fun for Everyone: Even my older teenage children enjoy playing this game with their younger brother. It's been a fantastic way for them to bond and have fun together as a family.Encourages Creativity: The game prompts players to act out imaginative activities, which has been great for fostering creativity and self-expression in my son.Promotes Physical Movement: I appreciate that the game involves physical activities like mimicking animals and performing simple tasks, which helps promote gross motor skills.Memory Component: As the game progresses, players need to remember and perform a sequence of actions, which has been great for enhancing memory skills in my son.Cons:Some Cards Are Hard to Interpret: Occasionally, we've come across cards where it's a bit challenging to guess what the action is supposed to be. However, this hasn't detracted much from our overall enjoyment of the game.Overall, Criss-Cross Applesauce is a fantastic game that's fun for the whole family. It's easy to play, encourages creativity and physical movement, and has provided countless hours of laughter and fun. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a family-friendly game that's both entertaining and educational.

My son is a little young to follow the game by the rules, but this game can be enjoyed freeform so it's a good introduction to the concept of games. Just playing with the cards, turning them over and imitating what's on them is enough to engage him and have fun right now. We are working on the concept of the talking stick, that one might take a little while.I'm kind of unsure why the cards came in the cardboard and had to be punched out, and why there's just a kind of random subset of letters. But this wasn't advertised as an alphabet game, so it's not that big a deal.I expect this to be able to stick around and have my son fully grow into playing the actual game. The cards being thick cardboard means they should last - we've already learned that card games are at risk right now. I think this is a pretty good combination early learning tool and game. We don't have any older kids but I can see how this can be fun for the whole family.

My 3-year-old son absolutely LOVES this game! The first time we played it, we had to basically drag him away from it because we finished playing it and it was night time. Then, he asked if he could sleep with the game in his bed. Then, the first thing he asked when he woke up the next morning was to play it again. So yes - needless to say it was a big hit with the kid.As for the game itself, it's very simple but fun. My son didn't really grasp the real rules so we kind of made up our own; basically, what we did was spread all the cards out and took turns flipping them over and the person would have to act out whatever was on the card. These cards included things like acting like a lion, or performing an action like sitting criss cross, and tracing letters with the included wand. We usually threw in some more activities like asking what other words started with the traced letter and it was really engaging and fun for him. His favorite are probably the animals - for example, if he drew the horse card he would gallop around our house for a few minutes. It's surprisingly physical for him and was great for helping burn off some energy.Overall, we're a big fan of this game. Not only that, but he noticed that the pamphlet has other games offered and keeps asking if we can buy them to play them as well. I'll be looking into it for sure, but in the meantime we're having a great time with this.

I got this game to play with my 5-year-old. He’s already in Young 5’s, but he enjoys charades-type games. I liked that this one also had letters included. The first night we got it, him and I ended up playing for 30+ minutes. It kept his attention and we were able to incorporate it into our bedtime prep since we could stop and start as needed and act out the cards wherever we were. The cards seem to be a good mix of movements. There were a few that were a little trickier to interpret, but my son was able to figure something out for all of them. We ended up just taking turns with the cards rather than following the rules of doing them in sequence. Next time we play, I’ll try to add that step in. The cards themselves were a thick cardboard, so are more likely to stand the test of time. Overall, he said he enjoyed it and had fun with it. I’m looking forward to when my other son is old enough to play in a couple years.My only complaint is that you have to pop the cards out of cardboard (it was easy enough, so not a big issue), but because once the cardboard outlines are out of the box, there is a lot of extra space for the cards. The box is much bigger than it needs to be and feels like it will be a waste of space in our board game area. I typically like to keep original boxes, but this might be a game to transfer to a bag or smaller container for space-saving purposes. As of writing this review, the price is also pretty high for what it is and there are other, cheaper options out there. Otherwise, this is a nice game and will be in regular rotation at our house.