Technology can great babysitter, whether at home or on the road or in the air. Us parents can’t rely on it all the time though, can we? In our quest for highly portable, non-electronic games we’ve stumbled on Zip It from the creator of Bananagrams, the scrabble without a board, word game.
It was the packaging that drew me to the game in the first place: Zip It is small fabric holder with zips on 2 sides and a little fabric handle to grab it by. It looks travel-sized, it’s lightweight and robust.
Zip it, the Gameplay
Inside there are 24 dice with a letter on each side.
The game is simple and the rounds are quick: two players, each player get 12 dice and as they say “go”, each has to use up all their dice in creating interlinked words. The first to finish wins the round and…here comes the clever bit…the case is your score board: so you pull the zip up one point.
First to get 10 points wins.
There are some suggestions included with the game for making it harder, giving more points for long words and, of course, you can make up your own rules.
What we liked about it
We’ve played Zip it! a couple of times now in different situation- waiting on a sport bench while one of the kids finishes sports club, at home “killing time” before dinner. It is compact enough to play on the airplane, train or car fold down seat back table.
What makes is work is that the rounds are quick. It gets us all thinking of spelling.
We found that the rounds got faster and faster as we played and our minds got into the association, pattern recognition.
Any Drawbacks
Arguments? Well, yes… because it’s so difficult, as third party bystander, not to get caught up in the game and make suggestions to those playing. 😀
“Daddy, you are cheating because Mummy is helping you!
Final verdict
This game is a lot of fun!
As players solve each round on their own and are concentrating this is also a pretty quiet game, so very suitable for to play on a plane or train. Though, depending on the temperament of the participants, as excitement builds “Done!” might be uttered louder than needed.
Zip It! has very quickly become a family favourite with us. It’s suitable for probably 7 years and above, depending on the literacy level of the child. (My 8 year old is a struggling reader, so he just assists me.)
On the other hand, the dice can be used to help early literacy, if you don’t mind the capital letters.
Based on our expereince of playing Zip it we highly recommend it as a game for home and for travel! Â
Info:
Zip It is available from various retailers, including Amazon for a RRP of £14.99, though we bought ours for £10.59 there.
Pin it for later
That sounds fun – my daughter is just learning to read now so hopefully we’ll be playing in a few years.
Ooh Cathy, you need to look at the other new product from this company- My first Bananagrams.Great for little ones learning to read!
would love to win